
By bequest of 
William Lukens Shoemaker 



POEMS 



BY 



DAVID GRAY. 



MEMOIRS OF HIS LIFE. 




BOSTON: 
ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1865. 






University Press: 
Welch, Bigelow, and Company, 

Cambridge. 



W- L. 



Shoemaker 
7 S »06 



PUBLISHERS' NOTICE. 



THE brief tragedy of poor David Gray, as 
unveiled in this volume, cannot fail to make 
a lasting impression on every unhardened reader. 
The poems of this ill-fated and winsome young 
Scotchman, heart-brother of Robert Burns, are 
marked by rare tenderness and sincerity, and by 
that fascinating felicity of verbal touch which is 
one of the choicest characteristics of true genius. 
Such a pure and pathetic story, such lucid and 
breathing poetry as we have here, are charged 
with a blessed ministry for a coarse and bustling 
age, for a reckless utilitarian people. The feelings 
of love, pity, and grief this little book is calculated 
to awaken will exert a salutary influence, soften- 
ing the heart, nourishing human sympathy and 
poetic sentiment. And the publishers are confi- 
dent that every appreciative reader of the volume, 



iv PUBLISHERS' NOTICE. 

while sighing over the plaintive fate of the author, 
will gladly aid in securing for him, on this West- 
ern continent, that meed of love and fame which 
just gleamed before his dying vision in the let- 
ters of generous friends and the first proof-sheet 
of his darling " Luggie." 

The publishers take pleasure in saying, that a 
generous portion of any profits which may accrue 
from the sale of this volume shall be sent to the 
parents of David Gray, who still reside in Merk- 
land, on the banks of the stream their gifted son 
has made famous. 




CONTE NTS. 



Page 

Introductory Notice, by Lord Houghton (R. M. Milnes) vii 

Memoir of the Author, by James Hedderwick . 17 

Final Memorials 59 

The Luggie 95 

In the Shadows 153 

Poems Named and without Names . . . 189 

Miscellaneous Sonnets 227 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 



IN the spring of 1860 I received a letter signed 
David Gray, enclosing some manuscript verses. 
The writer stated that he was a Scotchman, who 
had had the ordinary education of the artisans of 
that country ; that he had written these and other 
Poems, and desired my advice as to his coming 
up to London and making his way there in the 
career of Literature. I was struck with the su- 
periority of the versus to almost all the produc- 
tions of self-taught men that had heen brought 
under my observation, and I therefore answered 
the letter at some length, recognizing the remark- 
able faculty which Mr. Gray seemed to me to pos- 
sess ; urging him to cultivate it not exclusively, 
nor even especially, but to make it part of his 
general culture and intellectual development ; and 
above all desiring him not to make the peril- 



viii INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

ous venture of a London literary life, but, at any 
rate for some time, to content himself with such 
opportunities as he had, and to strive to obtain 
some professional independence, however humble, 
in which his poetical powers might securely ex- 
pand and become the solace of his existence instead 
of the precarious purveyor of his daily bread. A 
few weeks afterwards I was told a young man 
wished to see me, and when he came into the room 
I at once saw it could be no other than the young 
Scotch Poet. It was a light, well-built, but some- 
what stooping figure, with a countenance that at 
once brought strongly to my recollection a cast 
of the face of Shelley in his youth, which I had 
seen at Mr. Leigh Hunt's. There was the same 
full brow, out-looking eyes, and sensitive, melan- 
choly mouth. He told me at once that he had 
come to London in consequence of my letter, as 
from the tone of it he was sure I should befriend 
him. 

I was dismayed at this unexpected result of 
my advice, and could do no more than press him 
to return home as soon as possible. I painted as 
darkly as I could the chances and difficulties of a 
literary struggle in the crowded competition of 
this great city, and how strong a swimmer it re- 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. ix 

quired to be not to sink in such a sea of tumultuous 
life. "No — he would not return." I determined 
in my own mind that he should do so before I 
myself left town for the country, but at the same 
time I believed that he might derive advantage 
from a short personal experience of hard realities. 
He had a confidence in his own powers, a simple 
certainty of his own worth, which I saw would 
keep him in good heart and preserve him from 
base temptations. He refused to take money, say- 
ing he had enough to go on with ; but I gave him 
some light literary work, for which he was very 
grateful. When he came to me again, I went over 
some of his verse with him, and I shall not forget 
the passionate gratification he showed when I told 
him that, in my judgment, he was an undeniable 
Poet. After this admission he was ready to sub- 
mit to my criticism or correction, though he was 
sadly depressed at the rejection of one of his 
Poems, over which he had evidently spent much 
labor and care, by the Editor of a distinguished 
popular periodical, to whom I had sent it with a 
hearty recommendation. His, indeed, was not a 
spirit to be seriously injured by a temporary dis- 
appointment ; but when he fell ill so soon after- 
wards, one had something of the feeling of regret 
1 # 



x INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

that the notorious review of Keats inspires in 
connection with the premature loss of the author 
of " Endymion." 

It was only a few weeks after his arrival in 
London, that the poor boy came to my house ap- 
parently under the influence of violent fever. He 
said he had caught cold in the wet weather, hav- 
ing been insufficiently protected by clothing ; but 
had delayed coming to me for fear of giving me 
unnecessary trouble. I at once sent him back to 
his lodgings, which were sufficiently comfortable, 
and put him under good medical superintendence. 
It soon became apparent that pulmonary disease 
had set in, but there were good hopes of arrest- 
ing its progress. I visited him often, and every 
time with increasing interest. He had somehow 
found out that his lungs were affected, and the 
image of the destiny of Keats was ever before 
him. I leave to his excellent friend Mr. Hedder- 
wick to tell the rest of this sad story. I never 
saw him after he left London. I much regret 
that imperative circumstances did not permit me 
to take him under my roof, that I at least might 
have the satisfaction of thinking that all human 
means of saving his life had been exhausted : for 
there was in him the making of a great man. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. x i 

His lyrical faculty, astonishing 1 as it was, might 
not have outlived the ardor and susceptibilities 
of youth ; but there was that simple persistence 
of character about him, which is so prominent in 
the best of his countrymen. I was much struck 
with seeing how he had hitherto made the best of 
all his scanty opportunities ; how he had got all 
the good out of the homely virtues of his domestic 
life, with no sign of reproach at the plain practical 
people about him for not making much of his 
poetry and sympathizing with his visions of fame. 
These, indeed, must have seemed, to say the least, 
intolerably presumptuous to those about him, and 
indeed to most of those with whom he came in 
contact. I own I heeded them little. It has 
always appeared to me that if a certain brightness 
of hope and presumption of genius in young men 
who have had all the advantages of the best edu- 
cation in their reach, and whose youth has grown 
up in careful classical culture, and with the associ- 
ations of a refined society, be regarded with a 
compassionate interest and feelings no severer than 
a gentle ridicule, a far milder condemnation and 
deeper sympathy should be given to those who, 
without the ordinary processes of mental progress, 
without the free interchange of thought, and, above 



xii INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

all, without the means of weighing their own with 
other intelligences, have within themselves the cer- 
tain conviction of superiority, and the perceptions 
of an interminable vista of Beauty and of Truth. 
Such minds feel themselves to be, as it were, ex- 
ceptional creatures in the moral world in which 
they happened to be placed ; and it is as unreason- 
able to expect from them a just appreciation of 
their own powers, as it would be to require an 
accurate notion of distance from a being freshly 
gifted with sight. How is he to distinguish the 
near and commonplace from the distant and rare ? 
How is he to know that such have been the thoughts 
and such the expressions of thousands before him ? 
How is he to possess the distinctions of taste and 
discriminations of judgment which a long, even 
though superficial, literary education confers on 
so many undistinguished natures and uncritical 
minds ? Therefore, when the mere boy who can 
write such poems as these in the shadow of death 
has talked of being buried in Westminster Abbey, 
let not the feeling be other than that which would 
meet the aspirations of Stephenson the apprentice, 
or Nelson the midshipman. 

It is also significant that a good deal of the over- 
confidence which David Gray manifested gave way 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. X \\\ 

as soon as he knew he was really appreciated and 
cared for. His vanity sang forth, as it were, in 
the night of his discouragement, to give himself 
fortitude to bear the solitude and the gloom. "With 
all his admiration of his " Luggie," he clearly could 
not help in his mind comparing it with the " Sea- 
sons " ; and then he writes, " When I read Thom- 
son, I despair." Soon after an almost bombastic 
estimate of his own mental progress, he becomes 
thoroughly ashamed of himself, and says, " that 
being bare of all recommendations," he had "lied 
to his own conscience," deeming that " if he called 
himself a great man, others would be bound to 
believe him." Surely this was a spirit to which 
knowledge would have given a just humility, and 
for which praise and love were especially necessary, 
for they would have brought with them modesty 
and truth. 

I would recommend the readers of these Poems 
to keep in mind how deeply they are based on the 
few phenomena of nature that came within the 
Poet's observation. He revels in the frost and 
snow until the winter of his own sorrow and sick- 
ness becomes too hard for him to bear, and then 
he only asks for 

" One clear day, a snowdrop, and sweet air." 



xiv INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

The lost illusion of the cuckoo, when it was trans- 
formed into 

" A slender bird of modest brown," 

is missed, as something he cannot afford to spare 
in his scanty store of natural delights. The " Lug- 
gie " itself ever remains the simple stream that it 
really is, and is not decked-out in any fantastic 
or inharmonious coloring. He described in a let- 
ter to me the rapturous emotions with which the 
rich hues and picturesque forms of the coast of 
South Devonshire filled his breast ; and I believe 
that these very feelings would have prolonged 
his life, had circumstances permitted him to enjoy 
them. 

I will not here assume the position of a poetical 
critic, both because I know such criticism to be 
dreary and unsatisfactory, and because I am con- 
scious that the personal interest I took in David 
Gray is likely in some degree to influence my judg- 
ment. There is in truth no critic of poetry but 
the man who enjoys it, and the amount of gratifi- 
cation felt is the only just measure of criticism. 
I believe, however, that I should have found much 
pleasure in these Poems if I had met with them 
accidentally, and if I had been unaware of the 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 



xv 



strange and pathetic incidents of their production. 
But the public mind will not separate the intrinsic 
merits of the verses from the story of the writer, 
any more than the works and fate of Keats or of 
Chatterton ; we value all connected with the being 
of every true Poet, because it is the highest form 
of nature that man is permitted to study and 
enjoy. 

E. M. MILNES. 




MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



IT is unusual, I fear, to produce a Memoir of 
a mere literary aspirant, — of one whose place 
in the world of letters remains to be ascertained, 

— and concerning whom but little interest can be 
felt. Yet, whatever may be the ultimate verdict 
on the Poems contained in this volume, there is 
something in the short, ambitious, and melancholy 
career of their author which may perhaps assist 
the reader to judge accurately of their merits. 
There are poets of a high, although not perhaps 
of the highest order of intellect, whose writings 
are a continual reflex of their own inner selves, 

— who lay bare their hearts in their works, — and 
without some knowledge of whom, in their per- 
sonal character and relations, it would be diffi- 
cult to form any generous, or even fair estimate 
of their productions. 

B 



18 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

Of this intensely subjective class of bards was 
David Gray, the author of " The Luggie, and other 
Poems." His life, which embraced only his pas- 
sionate youth-time, was tremulously, almost mor- 
bidly, fanciful. It is necessary" to know this, not 
in order that his effusions may be judged charitably, 
but in order that they may be judged truly. What 
might have been weakness or affectation in a mature 
man was with him a natural instinct of tenderness. 
Had he lived to watch the fate of his book, he 
would probably have been as sensitive as Keats 
to the shafts of criticism. Consumption, ending 
fatally, has saved him from that ordeal. He is 
gone where no censure can wound, where no de- 
traction can affect him ; but a life as strangely 
bright and beautiful as it was unhappily brief seems 
to suggest a memory that should be guarded by 
loving hands. 

David Gray was born on the 29th of January, 
1838, on the banks of the Luggie, about eight miles 
distant from the city of Glasgow. His precise 
place of birth was Duntiblae, a little row of houses 
on the south side of the stream ; but, while he was 
a mere child, his parents removed to Merkland, on 
the north side, where they still continue to dwell. 
All his associations, therefore, clustered about Merk- 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 19 

land, which is situated within a mile of the town 
of Kirkintilloch, on the Gartshore road. It has 
neither the dignity of a village nor the primitive 
rudeness of a clachan, but is simply a group of 
roadside cottages, some half-dozen in number, hum- 
ble, but with slated roofs, having pleasant patches 
of garden in front and behind, and wholly occu- 
pied by handloom weavers and their families, who 
receive their webs and their inadequate, remunera- 
tion from the manufacturing warehouses of the 
great city. His parents are both living, — an in- 
dustrious and exemplary couple, with the constant 
click of the shuttle in one division of their cot- 
tage, and with doubtless the occasional squall of 
juvenile voices in the other. David was the eldest 
of eight children, there being four boys and three 
girls now left. The Luggie flows past Merkland 
at the foot of a precipitous bank, and shortly 
afterwards loses itself among the shadows of Ox- 
gang, with its fine old mansion-house and rookery, 
and debouches at Kirkintilloch into the Kelvin, 
one of the tributaries of the Clyde, celebrated in 
Scottish song. It is a mere unpretending rivulet, 
yet sufficient to turn the wheel of an old meal-mill 
at the straggling village of Waterside, a little 
way up the stream, though in a lower level of the 



20 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

valley. Neither, except at one or two points, is 
it of a character to attract a lover of the pictu- 
resque. But although not particularly fitted for a 
painter's eye, it sufficed for a poet's love. The 
little bright-eyed first-born of the Merkland hand- 
loom weaver had the more accessible nooks of it 
by heart long before his ambitious feet could carry 
him to more beautiful regions ; and although, in 
later years, he extended the radius of his rambles, 
and made intimate acquaintance with the magnifi- 
cent glens and cascades in the recesses of the 
Campsie fells, his tiny "natal stream," at the foot 
of the familiar "brae," so associated in his heart 
with the recollections of childhood and the en- 
dearments of home, never lost its freshness or its 
charm. 

Other appeals to his imagination were not want- 
ing. At a distance of some miles to the north 
was the noble outline of the Campsie range ; villa- 
ges of smoking industry dotted the valley and 
plain ; to the southwest Glasgow toiled all the 
week under its cloud, and consecrated the listen- 
ing Sabbath with the faint clang of its bells ; while 
nightly to the south the country was ablaze, and 
the sky reddened, with the numerous blast-furnaces 
to which the west of Scotland chiefly owes its 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 21 

preponderating wealth. Nor was the locality, in 
other respects, deficient in interest. Close to Kirk- 
intilloch the Koman invasion had left its tide- 
mark in the shape of certain easily distinguishable 
remains of the famous wall of Antoninus ; there, 
too, was the Forth and Clyde Canal, with its leis- 
urely craft looking picturesque in the landscape, 
as if sitting for artistic effect, or rejoicing in the 
land-rest between the turmoil of two oceans ; while 
the occasional rush of some railway train along 
its geological groove, — now hidden, anon revealed, 
and soon wholly out of sight, and out of hearing, 

— marked the advent of a new and more active 
era. All these things the " marvellous boy " must 
have daily noted ; but still it was mainly the music 
of his own little Luggie which murmured melodi- 
ously in his verse, and which he began at length 
fondly to dream of linking immortally with his 
name. 

Perhaps in no other country save Scotland could 
a lad in Gray's position — the son of a handloom 
weaver, burdened with a large family, and living 
in the outlying suburb of a common country town 

— have attained the advantage of a classical edu- 
cation. His first teacher was Mr. Adams, who 
still conducts, with efficiency, the Kii'kintilloch 



22 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

parish school. While under this excellent precep- 
tor, his literary bias became strikingly apparent. 
Zealous at his tasks, bright with precocious intel- 
lect, an unconscionable devourer of books, and 
personally ambitious of distinction, it was early in- 
tended that he should devote himself to the office 
of the Christian ministry in connection with the 
Free Church of Scotland, to which his parents 
belonged. When about fourteen years of age he 
was accordingly sent to Glasgow, where, support- 
ing himself to a considerable extent by laborious 
tuition, first as pupil-teacher in a public school in 
Bridge ton, and afterwards as Queen's scholar in 
the Free Church Normal Seminary, he contrived 
to attend the Humanity, Greek, and other classes 
in the University during four successive sessions. 
Having likewise obtained some employment as a 
private tutor, he found it necessary to add French 
to his lingual acquisitions. But whatever progress 
he may have made in his more severe studies, it 
soon became evident that the bent of his mind 
was poetical rather than theological. His imagina- 
tion became much more possessed with the beau- 
ties of Greek mythology than with the dogmas of 
Calvinistic faith. In place of composing sermons, 
he betook himself to writing verses. Many of 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 23 

these, bearing the ?iom de plume of " Will Gurney," 
were published, from time to time, in the columns 
of the "Glasgow Citizen," — a journal in which, 
some years before, Alexander Smith, the author 
of the " Life-Drama," had made his first appearance 
in print ; and abandoning the idea of the pulpit, 
and detesting the drudgery of the ferule, the de- 
termination seems gradually to have taken root 
in his mind of adopting literature as a profession. 

His letters at this time betray an extraordinary 
and altogether unhealthy degree of excitement, as 
of one setting out on some adventurous path, and 
uncertain whether he was a genius or a dreamer. 
In one of these, addressed to myself, he says : 
"This is the third note with which I have at- 
tempted to preface the lines I have enclosed. I 
know not what to say about them. They are 
the faint but true expressions of my imagination, 
though deficient — alas! how deficient to symbolize 
the beauty of the cloudland I have visited, or the 
ideal love of my soul. Perhaps you may deem 
this the raving of a restless spirit, — the spasmodic 
mawkishness of a ' metre-balladmonger ' : but do 
not, for God's sake, do not. If you knew how 
often I have halted in the middle of the lobby of 
your office with a bundle of manuscripts, — if you 



24 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

knew the wild dreams of literary ambition I am 
ever framing, yet all the time conscious of my 
own utter insignificance, my dear sir, you would 
pity me." These hectic sentences, accidentally 
preserved, are characteristic of the kind of desper- 
ate frenzy with which he was accustomed to com- 
pensate for, and avenge, on paper, the shrinking 
physical bashfulness of his nature. Shortly after- 
wards, when I had met him in society, I fancied 
I detected, in the restless yet timid twinkle of 
his dark eye, a lack of philosophic balance, a keen 
and vivid intellect united with a certain nervous 
incapacity of self-reliance, an irrepressible impulse 
to lofty literary enterprise, shaken with maddening 
apprehensions of failure. 

But neither his circumstances nor his tempera- 
ment permitted him to rest. My acquaintance with 
him was too slight and casual, irrespectively of 
difference of age, to invite or win his confidence. 
He had, however, several companions to whom he 
had been attracted by kindred sympathies and 
tastes, and with whom he often drew glowing and 
extravagant pictures of the future, and as often 
obliterated them as vain. Among these was Arthur 
Sutherland, a colleague of his own in the Free 
Church Normal Seminary, and now a respectable 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 25 

teacher at Maryburgh, near Dingwall. His letters 
to Sutherland, written early in 1860, when he had 
attained the age of twenty-two, are full of fan- 
tastic schemes to be undertaken by them jointly, 
one of which was to gather what money they 
could, meet on a certain day in Edinburgh, make 
their way to London on foot, and of course take 
the literary world by storm ! These brave and 
foolish notions originated probably in a state of 
mind which he confesses. " Solitude," he says, 
" and an utter want of all physical exercise, are 
working deplorable ravages in my nervous sys- 
tem. The crow's-feet are blackening about my 
eyes ; and I cannot think to face the sunlight. 
When I ponder alone over my own inability to 
move the world, — to move one heart in it, — no 
wonder that my ' face gathers blackness.' Tenny- 
son beautifully, and (so far) truly says, that the 
face is ' the form and color of the mind and life.' 
If you saw me!" Another congenial spirit was 
William Freeland, a native of Kirkintilloch, some- 
what older in years, and now filling, with honor, 
a responsible position in connection with the Glas- 
gow press. Many a ramble did he enjoy with 
the latter among the scenes of their common boy- 
hood, and many a dream did they both dream of 



26 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

how greatness was to be attained, and how fame 
was to be conquered. In Freeland he found a 
prudent, as well as a sympathetic adviser, who 
took every opportunity of curbing his too impetu- 
ous enthusiasm, and saving him from immolation 
on the critical slights and antagonisms which liter- 
ary precocity and assumption are certain to pro- 
voke, unless when under the sanctity of a last 
illness, or the shelter of a premature grave. 

The beginning of 1860 was a feverish and criti- 
cal period in the life of our young author. His 
term of service in the Free Normal Seminary had 
expired. He was idle, — that is, he was bringing 
in no money ; and prompted by his parents to find 
work, and impelled by his own ambition to seek 
fame, his case dilated, in his own eyes, into one 
of singular and desperate urgency. But was he 
really idle for a day, — for an hour ? I venture 
to suppose that there were few busier brains and 
fingers in existence than his. Only twenty-two ! 
and yet with sundry languages mastered, with 
whole libraries read, and Avith many a goodly quire 
of paper covered with matter which men high in 
the world of letters regarded as at least remark- 
able for his yeai's ! Knowing that unaided he was 
powerless for instant action, and that he could 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 21 

not afford to wait for the tardy rewards of modest 
merit, he seems to have taken to letter-writing on 
a large and bold scale, assuming the claims of 
genius for the favors which fortune had denied. 
He had completed a poem of a thousand lines. 
Would no one help him to get it published ? Writ- 
ing to Sutherland, he says, " I sent to G. H. Lewes, 
to Professor Masson, to Professor Aytoun, to Dis- 
raeli ; but no one will read it. They swear they 
have no time. For my part, I think the poem 
will live, and so I care not whether I were drowned 
to-morrow." Again he says: "I spoke to you of 
the refusals which had been unfairly given my 
poem. Better to have a poem refused than a poem 
unwritten." But I have evidence before me that 
he received considerate and kindly replies to some, 
at least, of his appeals, no doubt blended with 
wholesome advice, though, on the whole, most 
creditable to the courtesy and generosity of men 
having enormous demands on their time, address- 
ing a youth, an utter stranger to them, who wrote 
as if fancying he had a mission to electrify the 
world. 

His first influential friend was Mr. Sydney Do- 
bell, whose genius as a poet is not greater than 
his thorough kindliness as a man. To that gentle- 



28 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

man he introduced himself by means of a short 
note, dated November, 1859. It was addressed 
to him at Cleeve Tower, Cheltenham, and began 
as follows : — 

"First: Cleeve Tower I take to be a pleasant place, clothed 
with ivy, and shaded by ancestral beeches : at all events, it is 
mightily different from my mother's home. Let that be under- 
stood distinctly. 

"Second: I am a poet. Let that also be understood dis- 
tinctly. 

" Third: Having at the present time only 8s. a. week, I wish 
to improve my position, for the sake of gratifying and assisting 
a mother whom I love beyond the conception of the vulgar. 

" These, then, are my premises, and the inference takes the 
form of this request. Will you, — a poet, — as far as you can, 
assist another, a younger poet (of twenty) in a way not to wound 
his feelings, or hurt his independency of spirit 1 " 

The quaint confidence with which he enclosed 
his certificates of character, and asked his influ- 
ence, probably excited, in the mind of Mr. Dobell, 
a curiosity, if not an interest, regarding 1 the writer. 
At all events, a correspondence ensued, at times 
very wild and melodramatic on the one side, and 
full of stern counsel and substantial kindness on 
the other. This correspondence,' extending, at 
intervals, over the remainder of poor Gray's life, 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 29 

I have not before me in any complete form. But 
from a confusion of documents kindly placed in 
my hands, a few characteristic passages may in 
the course of this Memoir be culled. DobelPs 
first answer to Gray does not appear to have been 
preserved ; but it elicited a poetical response, of 
which the following is the opening passage. 

" 0, for the Towelled flow of knightly Spenser, 
Whose soul rained fragrance, like a golden censer 
Chain-swung in Grecian temple, that I might 
To your fine soul aread my love aright. 
With kind forbearance, birth of native feeling, 
A heart of mould celestial revealing, — 
You bore the vagaries of one, consuming 
His inner spirit with divine illuming ; 
You bore the vagaries of one, who dreams, — 
What time his spirit, 'mid the streaky gleams 
Of autumn sunset wanders, finding there 
Heaven's ante-chamber, vermeil-flushed, and fair 
In feathery purples, fringed with orange-dun, — 
The porch of bliss, the threshold of the sun. 
had I known thee when the Auroral birth 
Of poesy o'erwhelmed mo, and this earth 
Became an angel-fingered lyre dim-sounding, 
To souls like thine in echoes sweet abounding ! 
Then would thy presence, brother, have fulfilled 
A yearning of my spirit, and instilled 



30 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

An inspiration in me, like a star 

Luminous, tremulous, and oracular ! 

But far away, with all my hopes and fears, 

I wrung a blessing from the flowing years, 

And nursed what my good God had given me, 

The birthright of great souls, — dear poesy. 

Now have I found thee, but, dear heart ! the golden 

Dream to which my soul is so beholden 

Is circumscribed and shorn, because I am 

A beggar of thy bounty. Is the balm 

Of thy dear converse all in this to end, 

And shall the beggar never be the friend ? " 

We have here, with some imperfections, an audi- 
ble echo of the earlier style of Keats, as well as 
a sample of the varied means which Gray employed 
to wrest from men of distinction, not merely their 
recognition, but their friendship. Writing in plain 
prose to Mr. Dobell, I find him thus foolishly va- 
ticinating : " I tell you that, if I live, my name 
and fame shall be second to few of any age, and 
to none of my own. I speak thus because I feel 
power. Nor is this feeling an artificial disease, as 
it was in Rousseau, but a feeling which has grown 
with me since ever I could think." That this ex- 
travagance must have been promptly and sharply 
rebuked, I learn by a subsequent letter from Gray, 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 31 

dated December, 1859. " You were pretty heavy 
on me," he says, "and my egotism, as you called 
it. If you knew me a little better, and my aims, 
and how I have struggled to gain the little knowl- 
edge I have, you would account me modest. 
Mark : it is not what I have done, or can now do, 
but what I feel myself able and born to do, that 
makes me seem so selfishly stupid. Yon sentence, 
thrown back to me for reconsideration, would cer- 
tainly seem strange to anybody but myself; but 
the thought that I had so written to you only 
made me the more resolute in my actions, and the 
wilder in my visions. What if I sent the same 
sentence back to you again, with the quiet, stern 
answer, that it is my intention to be the ' first poet 
of my own age, and second only to a very few of 
any age.' Would you think me 'mad,' 'drunk,' 
or an ' idiot ' ; or my ' self-confidence ' one of the 
' saddest paroxysms ' ? When my biography falls 
to be written, will not this same ' self-confidence ' 
be one of the most striking features of my intel- 
lectual development ? Might not a ' poet of twen- 
ty 'feel great things ? In all the stories of mental 
warfare that I have ever read, that mind which 
became of celestial clearness and godlike power, 
did nothing for twenty years but feel. And I am 



32 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

so accustomed to compare my own mental progress 
with that of such men as Shakespeare, Goethe, and 
Wordsworth, (examples of this last proposition,) 
that the dream of my youth will not he fulfilled, 
if my fame equal not, at least that of the latter 
of these three." In another letter, written in 
another mood, he says : "I am ashamed of what 
I wrote to you before. I was an actor then, not 
myself: for, being bare of all recommendations, I 
lied with my own conscience, deeming that if I 
called myself a great man you were bound to be- 
lieve me." This sudden and unwonted modesty 
was probably the mere expression of a casual fit 
of despondency, — entirely sincere while it con- 
tinued, yet not more sincere than the arrogance 
which it recanted, and which, as the master im- 
pulse of his being, was certain to reassert its su- 
premacy. However this might be, Mr. Dobell 
appears to have become favorably impressed by 
the fearless candor of the young enthusiast, as I 
find him writing to Gray, who had been talking of 
going to Edinburgh, penniless, to try his fortune : 
" The tone of your last letter is, to me, a better 
evidence that you are born to do something noble 
than any number of confident oracles, or any flatu- 
lent ' consciousness of power ' that ever distended 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 33 

the figure of dyspeptic youth ; nay, even than any 
genuine ' consciousness of power ' that is sufficient- 
ly objective and shapely to be seen, known, and 
named by its owner. I think so highly of that 
letter as a diagnostic, that if you carry out your 
intention of going to Edinburgh, it will much 
gratify me if you will accept one or two notes of 
introduction to friends of mine there, whose good 

opinion, if you win it, may be of use to you 

Let me know how things fare with you, and be 
sure of the increased interest and good will — 
which 1 hope that further knowledge may ripen into 
friendship — of yours faithfully, Sydney Dobell." 

When relieved from his duties as a teacher in 
Glasgow, young Gray — now engaged on a play 
after the model of Shakespeare, anon upon a descrip- 
tive poem after a manner of his own, and filling up 
every interval of time with a correspondence as 
voluminous as that conducted by a Minister of State 
■ — must have been both an enigma and an annoyance 
to the humble household at Merkland. A genius in 
the family, dreaming insane dreams, and earning no 
bread, — a Pegasus spurning his harness, and doing 
no honest drudgery, — is apt, among persons whose 
choice lies between famine and toil, to inspire other 
feelings than those of admiration and pride. Ac- 
2* c 



34 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

cordingly, every day that elapsed increased his 
feverish anxiety to do something practical, — to 
achieve something great, — to unlock, with the gold- 
en key of his genius, some honorable door to pre- 
ferment. At one time he talked of starting a school 
in conjunction with his friend Sutherland ; but the 
project was fiercely against the grain, and came 
to nothing. Some of his Glasgow friends recom- 
mended him to look out for a situation in connection 
with the newspaper press, but none offered. Mean- 
while, the idea of bursting like a meteor upon Lon- 
don never seems to have left his mind, and was 
probably stimulated at length into action by the fact 
that Robert W. Buchanan, a young man whose ac- 
quaintance he had made in Glasgow, and who was 
equally fired with the ambition of literary eminence, 
entertained a similar project. Gray, however, hav- 
ing probably obtained assistance from some of the 
friends whom he was continually interesting in his 
behalf, started on his courageous venture alone. In 
a brief note to his parents, dated Glasgow, 5th May, 
1860, he says, " I start off to-night at 5 o'clock by 
the Edinburgh and Glasgow railway, right on to 
London, in good health and spirits." 

Year after year, what a grave to ambition and 
high hope must the great metropolis prove to many 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 35 

a sanguine youth ! How the " burning and shining 
light " of the provincial town is apt to become lost 
in the blaze of its accumulated intellect ! What in- 
numerable hearts — hearts that may have felt as if 
throbbing with celestial fire — must be continually 
breaking, unnoticed and unknown in the midst of its 
incomparable and delusive splendors ! Our youth- 
ful adventurer, however, was not without sundry 
advantages. True, his stock-in-trade consisted only 
of a mass of unpublished and possibly unsaleable 
verse ; but he had nevertheless most of the qualities 
calculated to ingratiate him with strangers, — an ex- 
cellent education, a clerkly style of caligraphy, a 
fervid willingness to work at any congenial task, 
a person eminently prepossessing, and the blended 
diffidence and courage significant of simple manners 
and honest aims. To Dobell he wrote : "I am in 
London, and dare not look into the middle of next 
week. What brought me here ? God knows, for 
I don't. Alone in such a place is a horrible thing. 
I have seen Dr. Mackay, but it 's all up. People 

don't seem to understand me Westminster 

Abbey I I was there all day yesterday. If I live 
I shall be buried there — so help me God ! A com- 
pletely defined consciousness of great poetical genius 
is my only antidote against utter despair and des- 



36 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

picable failure." A youth with such an exaggerated 
notion of his own powers, and so destitute of all 
prudent reticence on the subject of his conscious 
capacity for triumph, would probably have fared 
roughly in the world had he lived into the thick of 
its battle. Yet was he ever repenting ; for what 
seems to be his next letter to Dobell begins : " Let 
me write to you just now without that melodramatic 
air and tone which seems to haunt me like an evil 
spirit. Perhaps if you saw me, you would wonder 
if the quiet, bashful, boyish-looking fellow before 
you was the writer of all yon blood-and-thunder." 
Who knows but that, had he lived to a riper age, he 
might have "reformed it altogether," through the 
bitterness of that disappointment whose sweet fruit 
is wisdom, and through the " years that bring the 
philosophic mind ! " 

But in the present crisis of his fortunes, Gray 
needed all his extraordinary gifts of self-sustainment, 
and there can be no doubt that they served him in 
good stead. Endowed with a feebler purpose and 
a fainter hope, how could he have flown at such high 
game, engaged so much kindly interest, secured so 
much instant help ? Among those whom he found 
to befriend him were Mr. D obeli's cousin, Miss 
Coates, of Upper Terrace Lodge, Hampstead, and 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 37 

her friend Miss Marian James, to whose elegant pen 
English literature is indebted for several charming 
works of fiction. Of the kindness of these ladies 
he always spoke in terms of grateful appreciation. 
But by far the most important interview which he 
contrived to obtain in London was with Mr. R. 
Monckton Milnes, M. P. Occupying a place among 
those who add the grace of letters to the dignity of 
statesmanship, I can readily imagine that gentleman 
to be a good deal exposed to the importunities of 
similar aspirants. To this cause at least I am in- 
clined to attribute the fact that Gray had to make 
his way through sundry discouragements before 
reaching the true kernel of his liking. He an- 
swered his letters coldy and curtly ; and even when 
he had seen the tall and timid youth, and been 
favorably impressed with the ability which his poe- 
try manifested, he appears to have disguised, to 
some extent, the interest which he really felt, lest 
he should stimulate fatally the vanity which he 
detected and feared. Writing to his parents, Gray 
says: "I think Monckton Milnes will prove my 
friend. He says that to be a Scotch minister is the 
very best thing I could do. ' However, (says he, 
the last time I saw him,) you can stay a few weeks 
more in London, and I'll give you £1 per week 



38 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

till you get a situation ; but it would be better for 
you to go home.' He gave me some MS. to copy, 
— in fact, made something for me to do." On all 
hands, Gray seems to have been dissuaded from 
relying on poetry for a subsistence ; and the " Lug- 
gie " was, I believe, although I find no trace of it 
in the papers in my hands, rejected in several lofty 
quarters. But, however chagrined by the disparag- 
ing remarks of certain critics, he was by no means 
badly off". Through Dr. Mackay he obtained some 
work, and he was likewise profitably employed in 
copying MS. for Lord Elgin's Japanese secretary, 
whom, in one of his letters, he calls " the frank, 
generous Mr. Oliphant." But the shadow was 
about to descend. Incidentally I find him writing 
home, in a letter still dated May, the month of his 
departure from Glasgow : " By the by, I have had 
the worst cold ever I had in my life. I cannot get 
it away properly : but I feel a great deal better to- 
day." Writing shortly afterwards, he says, " The 
only thing that bothers me is this cold : it 's so 
heavy on my chest that I can't get it up." From 
these sentences it is evident that the disease which 
was ultimately to sap his young life had already 
begun its ravages. The "beginning of the end" 
had come. 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 39 

Gray was at length completely prostrated with 
illness. In his loneliness, he became, I believe, a 
fellow-lodger, for a short time, with Buchanan, who 
had arrived in London about the same time, and 
who was pushing his way successfully among cer- 
tain of the metropolitan periodicals. But, thanks 
to the kindness of his wealthier friends, there was 
no fear of destitution to aggravate his ph} T sical and 
mental sufferings. The young poet, suddenly struck 
down in the enthusiasm of his struggles and the 
pride of his hopes, was a spectacle eminently cal- 
culated to touch the large heart of the biographer 
of Keats. Mr. Milnes bestowed upon him the deli- 
cate attentions and charities of a true gentleman, — 
providing for him the best medical advice, together 
with practical aid of every kind ; and, considerate 
of the home-sickness which usually accompanies 
ill-health in a strange place, had him carefully 
sent back to Merkland, which, however humble, 
was his home, and therefore richer in comfort for 
him at that moment than any other spot in the 
world. 

Fancy our poetic dreamer once more under his 
father's roof, with all his schemes frustrated, and 
with his mind full of bewildering recollections of 
the new spheres of life, of which he had caught only 



40 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

a brief, dazzling glimpse ! Scarcely a doubt could 
exist as to the mortal character of his ailment. He 
was, however, attended by a competent local phy- 
sician, Dr. Stewart, of Kirkintilloch ; and, through 
varying moods of confirmed invalidism, he wrought 
hopefully at his poems, and endeavored to interest 
all and sundry in their publication. Besides Dr. 
Stewart, he was at length visited, at the instance of 
Mr. Dobell, by Dr. Drummond of Glasgow. The 
latter took a serious, and indeed most emphatic and 
active view of his case ; and adding to his keen 
professional zeal a friendly personal interest in the 
sufferer, originated a movement to get him conveyed 
to a southern climate. He himself — young, ambi- 
tious, clinging wildly to life — became eager for a 
sea-voyage, and a residence under warmer skies, as 
his only hope ; and, with this view, kept up a con- 
tinual and half-frantic correspondence with his vari- 
ous friends. But the idea of a voyage south met, 
on the whole, with little encouragement. Mr. 
Milnes wrote : " The remedy derived from climate 
is of the most uncertain and capricious character, 
and, in many cases, the absence of affectionate 
care, and the sense of loneliness which succeeds the 
yearning for the unknown, so despairing, that I 
would never take on myself to advise any friend 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 41 

to go away. The treatment, too, of the disease is 
now made less dependent on warmth of atmosphere 
than it used to be, and the cases of recovery are 
much more frequent. I know how easy a thing it 
is to give counsel, and how poor is consolation ; but 
still I must expect you to be brave and resigned, 
and to feel that, above being a Poet, is the power 
of being a Man. There is much in this world far 
sadder and crueller than the thought of leaving it ; 
and the old Greeks counted every man happy who 
died young." In a less decisive, but still similar 
tone, wrote Mr. Oliphant, with whom he appears 
to have been desirous of proceeding, in some useful 
capacity, to Japan. He showed anxiety to aid him 
in his views, if the doctor considered a long voyage 
imperative. From the difficulties, however, which 
he suggested, his tone was undoubtedly dissuasive ; 
and, taking all things into consideration, he added, 
" If there is any chance of your health standing 
the English climate, I would recommend your re- 
maining." Surely we cannot say that sympathy 
was denied him, after reading the following sen- 
tences from Dobell : " I shall say nothing of what 
I feel (for I am no hand at words in such cases), 
except that there were some tears on my face after 
reading your letter. Not for sorrow exactly, — 



42 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

sorrow never makes me 'cry/ — but for 'the pity 
of it, the pity of it, Iago ! ' Well, if matters are 
as you say, — which, however, I will not wholly 
believe till the good physician whom I have asked 
to examine your chest reports it hopeless, — we 
must accept them as we best can, you know, and 
see what is to be done under the inevitable con- 
ditions. And before looking in those transmortal 
directions to which good folks usually seem to 
think it imperative to turn their dying eyes, — 
forgetting that the long, sweet habit of earthly 
perception is not to be unlearned in a day, — let 
us try what we can do on this side the eternal 
threshold." Every one, however, seemed to shrink 
from the responsibility of setting the young invalid 
forth upon a long sea-voyage alone. The next alter- 
native, then, suggested and urged by Dr. Drummond, 
was that he should pass the winter in the South of 
England. The doctor recommended Brompton Hos- 
pital : Mr. Milnes, Torquay in Devonshire. 

As a specimen of the kind of letters which Gray 
wrote at this time, I subjoin one to myself, dated 
November 21, 1860 : — 

" I write you in a certain commotion of mind, and may speak 
wrongly. But I write to you because I know that it will take 
much to offend you when no offence is meant : and when the 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 43 

probable offence will proceed from youthful heat and frantic 
foolishness. It may be impertinent to address you, of whom I 
know so little, and yet so much ; but the severe circumstances 
seem to justify it. 

" The medical verdict pronounced upon me is certain and rapid 
death if I remain at MerUand. That is awful enough even to a 
brave man. But there is a chance of escape : as a drowning 
man grasps at a straw I strive for it. Good, kind, true Dobell 
writes me this morning the plans for my welfare which he has 
put in progress, and which most certainly meet my wishes. 
They are as follows : Go immediately, and as a guest, to the house 
of Dr. Lane, in the salubrious town of Richmond : thence, when 
the difficult matter of admission is overcome, to the celebrated 
Brampton Hospital for chest diseases ; and in the spring to Italy. 
Of course, all this presupposes the conjectural problem that I 
will slowly recover. ' Consummation devoutly to be wished ! ' 
Now, you think, or say, what prevents you from taking advan- 
tage of all these plans ? At once, and without any squeamish- 
ness, money for an outfit. I did not like to ask Dobell, nor do I 
ask you ; but hearing a ' subscription ' had been spoken of, I urge 
it with all my weak force. I am not in want of an immense 
sum, but say £12, or £15. This would conduce to my safety 
as far as human means could do so. If you can aid me in 
getting this sum, the obligation to a sinking fellow-creature will 
be as indelible in his heart as the moral law. 

" I hope you will not misunderstand me. My barefaced re- 
quest may be summed thus : If your influence set the affair a- 
going, quietly and quickly, the thing is done, and I am ofE 



44 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

Surely I am worth £ 15. And for God's sake overlook the 
strangeness, and the freedom, and the utter impertinence of this 
communication. I would be off for Richmond in two days, 
had I the money : and sitting here thinking of the fearful 
probabilities makes me half-mad." 

Helpless himself, the death-stricken invalid could 
only thus appeal for help with the strength which 
is the prerogative of weakness ; and he found it 
in more than one quarter. Mr. Milnes, the kind- 
hearted ladies at Hampstead, and other English 
friends, were ready to lend whatever little assist- 
ance might be needed ; while, among the benevo- 
lent persons in Scotland whom Mr. Dobell had 
moved in his behalf, was the excellent Mrs. Nichol, 
widow of the late Dr. Nichol, Professor of Astron- 
omy in the University of Glasgow. The latter re- 
sided in Edinburgh ; but through Mr. William Lo- 
gan, of Glasgow, she communicated to poor Gray 
all kinds of sympathy and aid. Mr. Logan, formerly, 
and for many years, connected with the City Mis- 
sion, is by nature a philanthropist. He became a 
frequent visitor at Merkland, and the chief medium 
of communication with most of the dying poet's in- 
fluential friends. A little money which had been 
offered through him with a view to gratify his ar- 
dent wish of seeing his poems in print, was now 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 45 

made available for the more urgent purpose of con- 
veying him south ; and Mr. Logan, having aided his 
parents in the necessary preparations, and provided 
for his kindly reception immediately on the arrival 
of the train in London, saw him, towards the end 
of the year, tenderly and safely away, — a fragile 
fugitive from the rigors of the northern winter, with 
a good deal of hope in his heart, and a moderate sum 
of money in his pocket. 

Alas ! the forlorn traveller carried with him one 
fatal, one inevitable, one desperately-clinging and 
remorseless companion, in the shape of that disease 
which is evermore paling the cheek of beauty and 
blighting the aspirations of youth. Dr. Lane, at 
his celebrated hydropathic establishment, Sudbrook 
Park, Richmond, treated him with conspicuous kind- 
ness ; but his health did not improve. His cough 
" was no better," and he feared that the sudden re- 
moval of the cod-liver oil " was beginning to tell on 
his appearance." Writing to his parents, he says : 
" I believe, after all, that there 's no place like 
home ; but however sweet and pleasant and re- 
freshing the idea of it is now, and will be ever, I 
will not come north as long as I am able to remain 
south. Kindness, and comfort, and change of air, 
and so forth, are all very well. Yet is something 



46 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

awanting : that inexpressible tenderness in trifles 
which enriches existence and makes it bearable. 
Life is thrust upon us : men wish it not. This 
wide universe is an enigma and a mystery. Death 
alone can unriddle it. Let it come. You see I am 
a little homesick, like the boy when he goes to 
school. I would not have been homesick had I re- 
mained well ; but whenever I get sick, and weary, 
and weak, as I am now, I can't help displaying a 
little of the woman." In the same letter he says : 
"There is no notice yet of a removal hence. I am 
dreadfully afraid of Brompton : living among sal- 
low, dolorous, dying consumptives, is enough to 
kill me. If I am put into a room with four cough- 
ing, weak, nerveless patients, how do you think 
I 'm to bear it ? Here I 'm as comfortable as can 
be : a fire in my room all day, plenty of meat, and 
good society, — nobody so ill as myself: but there, 
perhaps hundreds far worse (the hospital holds 218 
in all stages of the disease — 90 of them died last 
report), dying beside me, perhaps — it frightens 
me." Miss Coates had subscribed to Brompton 
Hospital fur the express purpose of procuring his 
admission. But either no vacancy occurred, or he 
shrunk from it. Mr. Milnes thereupon sent him 
to Devonshire, under arrangements calculated to 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 4? 

insure for him as large a measure as possible of 
affectionate attention and care. The sight of the 
Sanatarium at Torquay, however, appears to have 
had an extraordinary effect upon his nervous sys- 
tem. His cry became "home, home!" and, to the 
amazement of his northern friends, he presented 
himself abruptly at Merkland. 

It was now the middle of January, 1861, the 
opening of the year of which he was never to see 
the end. To Freeland he wrote : " Of course you 
know that I am home, — having wildly (and per- 
haps unwisely) broken through all the plans and 
good intentions of my friends. But the sight of 
the Consumptive Hospital, and the folk in it, put 
me into a severe nervous fever, and nothing would 
satisfy me but home. When you come out (and 
come soon) I will recount to you my miseries and 
misfortunes. If I don't either get better or worse 
quickly, my mind will become diseased." Sending 
one of his pieces, written " In the Shadows," he 
says : " I wrote the enclosed since I came back, 
the first verses I have written for eight months. 
Not one line pleases me : when I read Thomson I 

despair When you come, bring books — of 

any kind, if I have not read them. Books, books, 
books, — I have none." Indeed, as he did not 



48 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

seem to suffer from his journey, but, on the con- 
trary, gave evidence of revived literary energy, 
his friends were hopeful of an increase of physical 
strength, which the opening up of a milder season 
would confirm. Mr. Milnes wrote to him on Jan- 
uary 19 : " Of course I am sorry at the failure of 
the Torquay venture, but you have shown so much 
vivacity in getting free from it, that I trust you 
have more life in you than was supposed, and that 
I may yet receive many letters from you. I knew 
the conditions of hospital life would be painful and 
embarrassing to you ; but I hoped that the medi- 
cal advice, the climate, and the scenery would have 
proved compensations. Had my friends arrived at 
Torquay in time to look after you, they might have 
devised some other plan, but it is not for one iu 
health and comfort to analyze the feelings of one 
in your position." Something, however, had been 
attempted, — perhaps the best had been done, — 
and, at all events, the suffering youth had received 
a lesson in contentment. Nor had that lesson, as 
far as could be judged, been ineffectual, for he 
appeared to recognize in the toil-supported abode 
at Merkland a comfort sweeter and dearer than 
the luxury of gilded saloons. 

Day after day — week after week — month after 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 49 

month — life was now ebbing- — ebbing away from 
him forever. One day — I have no clew to the date 
beyond the word " Monday " — a memory must 
have recurred to him of a boyish companionship, 
a memory of one to whom, in gladder days, he had 
talked of being " ready for adventures," and ad- 
dressing his " dear, dear, true Sutherland," he 
wrote : — 

" As my time narrows to a completion you grow dearer. I 
think of you daily with quiet tears. I think of the happy, happy 
days we might have spent together at Maryburgh ; but the vision 
darkens. My crown is laid in the dust forever. Nameless too ! 
God, how that troubles me ! Had I but written one immortal 
poem, what a glorious consolation ! But this shall be my epitaph, 
if I have a gravestone at all, — 

' ' Twas not a life, 
' Twas but apiece of childhood thrown away.' 

O dear, dear Sutherland ! I wish I could spend two healthy 
months with you : we would make an effort, and do something 
great. But slowly, insidiously, and I fear fatally, consumption is 
doing its work, until I shall be only a fair, odorous memory (for I 
have great faith in your affection for me) to you, — a sad tale for 
your old age. 

' Wlwm the gods love, die young.' 

Bless the ancient Greeks for that comfort. If I was not ripe, do 
you think I would be gathered 1 

3 D 



50 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

" Work for fame for my sake, dear Sutherland. Who knows 
but in spiritual being I may send sweet dreams to you, — to ad- 
vise, comfort, and command ! who knows ? At all events, when 
I am mooly, may you be fresh as the dawn. 

" Yours till death, and I trust hereafter too, 

"David Gray." 

Even under this strong and touching conscious- 
ness of an early doom, — with the dart of death, 
like the sword of Damocles, continually suspended 
over him, and visible, — Gray continued to weave, in 
glory if not in joy, his poetic fancies. Down, in- 
deed, to the very edge of the grave, he contrived to 
plant those flowers of poesy which he trusted would 
bloom over him when he was dead. His beautiful 
dying sonnets were all written when his shattered 
frame only showed more clearly the burning of the 
internal fire. In the month of May he wrote to 
Freeland : " I feel more acutely the approach of that 
mystic dissolution of existence. The body is unable 
to perform its functions, and like rusty machinery 

creaks painfully to the final crash I cannot 

write ; my head aches, and my hand trembles ; yet I 
must make an effort. About my poem, — it troubles 
me like an infernal ever-present demon. Some day 
I '11 burn all I have ever written, — yet no ! They 
are all that remain of me as a living soul. Milnes 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 51 

offers £5 towards its publication. I shall have it 
ready for you by Saturday first. You must ask 
Hedderwick if he will read it ; and perhaps Sheriff 
Bell and other Glasgow critics would look at it. Do 
I dream ? " To Freeland likewise, who was one of 
his most regular and welcome visitors, he had 
scrawled out a high-flown dedication ending with 
these words: "Before I enter that nebulous uncer- 
tain land of shadowy notions and tremulous wonder- 
ings, — standing on the threshold of the sun and 
looking back, — I cry thee, Beloved ! a last fare- 
well, lingeringly, passionately, without tears." 

Although seeing much to admire in the poem of 
" The Luggie," I hesitated to gaurantee it such a 
reception as would render its publication profitable. 
Some other opinions which were obtained in Glas- 
gow were more adverse. Moreover, circumstances 
prevented me, at the time, from taking any active 
initiative. Delay after delay occurred ; but there 
was no delay on the part of the insidious foe with 
which the young poet contended. September came, 
and he wrote despairingly to Logan : "If my book 
be not immediately gone on with, I fear I may never 
see it. Disease presses closely on me. Reasons 
innumerable I could urge for the lawful sweetness 
of my desire, but your goodness will suggest them. 



52 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

The merit of my MSS. is very little, — mere 

hints of better things, — crude notions harshly lan- 
guaged : but that must be overlooked. They are 
left not to the world (wild thought !) but as the 
simple, possible, sad, only legacy I can leave to 
those who have loved and love me." 

It was a hard task to resist such appeals. Nor 
were they wholly resisted. There was much dis- 
cussion, and even some movement, but the matter 
hung fire. Glasgow was a bad field for the publica- 
tion of poetry. The result to the emaciated and 
feeble author might be failure and disappointment, 
hastening the inexorable change. November with 
its gloom arrived, and Gray, obviously feeling his 
end very near, made a final appeal to Mr. Dobell, — 
the stanch friend whom he had never seen, and 
was destined never to see. " Surely," he wrote, 
"he to whom the poem — the old, incomplete, de- 
spised, beloved poem — is dedicated, shall read it. 
Dear Mr. Dobell, will you read ' The Luggie/ and 
see whether or not it is worthy of your favor or ac- 
ceptance ? I have inscribed it to you, after the 
ancient manner of Thomson. God knows it is not 
much ; but, as I said to you a year ago, it is all 
I have." The tender bribe of the dedication was 
modestly declined for reasons deemed satisfactory, 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 53 

but with the aid of his lady friends at Hampstead, 
and the ready co-operation of Mr. Macmillan, pub- 
lisher, Cambridge, the poem was, without loss of 
time, put into the hands of the printer. By a fortu- 
nate accident, a specimen page beginning, " How 
beautiful ! " reached Merkland on the very day pre- 
ceding his death. It was accompanied by the fol- 
lowing note from the accomplished hand of the 
authoress of " Ethel " : — 

" Upper- Terrace Lodge, Nov. 29. 
" My dear Mr. Gray, — I have heard from Mr. Macmillan this 
morning. He says the MS. will form a volume like ' Edwin of 
Deira ' ; and the enclosed is a specimen page sent, with the print- 
er's estimate. I cannot resist the impulse to send it on to you, 
because I think it will give you so much pleasure to see even this 
small portion of your work already in the form in which I hope 
before long we may see it published. After Mr. Dobell's praise 
of your poetry, you will hardly care for mine; yet I will say 
briefly that those sonnets which I found time to read before send- 
ing off* the MS. to Cambridge, impressed me deeply with their 
truth and beauty, and rare excellence and simplicity of pathos. 
It seems to me, too, that in your poetry, even the most mournful, 
there is a shining forth of that hopeful, loving faith in God's love, 
which it is indeed a good thing for poets to teach, and which I 
earnestly trust is the abiding solace and rest of your own spirit. 
I can only write these few lines now ; but believe that I am 
always, with much sympathy, sincerely your friend, 

"Marian James." 



54 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

As he gazed upon the neatly-printed page, he 
seemed to feel that the dream of his life was about 
to be fulfilled. He read its clear type as if by 
the reflection of a light caught from the spiritual 
world. That it was " good news," he said ; that he 
might now subside tranquilly — "without tears" 
— into his eternal rest, he probably felt. Next 
day, the 3d of December, 1861, the shadow of 
utter blackness came down upon the humble house- 
hold at Merkland, blinding all eyes. David Gray 
was no more. His spirit had been borne gently 
away on the wings of the strong and beautiful 
promises breathed from the Book of Life, — almost 
his last words being, " God has love, and I have 
faith." He was in his twenty-fourth year. Among 
his papers the following memorial was found, writ- 
ten in his own clear hand : — 

MY EPITAPH. 

Below lies one whose name was traced in sand, — 

He died not knowing what it was to live : 

Died while the first sweet consciousness of manhood 

And maiden thought electrified his soul : 

Taint beatings in the calyx of the rose. 

Bewildered reader, pass without a sigh 

In a proud sorrow ! There is life with God, 

In other kingdom of a sweeter air : 

In Eden every flower is blown. Amen. 

David Gray. 

Sept. 27, 1861. 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 55 

Whether these lines will yet be inscribed on any 
stone, I know not. At all events, it will not be 
among the congregated tombs of the great ones 
of all time. Westminster Abbey was not for him. 
If, in any possible future, there arose before him 
a vision of its solemn arches, its silent yet elo- 
quent sculptures, and its groups of pilgrim wor- 
shippers, it was only at the end of a term of years 
which he was fated never to reach. But not the 
less peacefully will his spirit rest in the near 
neighborhood of that home from which his affec- 
tions were never weaned, and of that stream whose 
low murmur he labored, through years of passion- 
ate yearning, to exalt into an eternal melody. 
Not far from Merkland, on an elevation a short 
distance from the highway, there is situated a 
lonely place of sepulture, surrounded by a low, 
rude wall of stone, with a little watch-tower over 
the entrance-gate, useful for shelter and observa- 
tion during nights, long since bygone, when grave- 
yards were broken into and plundered, but now 
occupied with the few implements necessary for 
the performance of the last mortal rites. It has 
neither church nor house attached, and is known 
as the " Auld Aisle Burying-ground." With the 
poet it had been a favorite place of resort and 



56 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

meditation. He could see from it the Luggie, the 
Bothlin burn, the Woodilee farm, all the localities 
which he most loved. There, as appeared from 
the dates on the gravestones, had the bones of 
his ancestors reposed for above two hundred years ; 
and thither, on the Saturday after his death, were 
his own remains carried, — on hand-spokes, after 
the old Scotch fashion, — followed by about thirty 
mourners. The wintry day had been lowering, 
but the hour of the funeral was brightened with 
gleams of clear sunshine, and in the midst of many 
regrets, yet of some soothings, all that was mortal 
of David Gray was laid deep in the mould, near 
a solitary ash-tree, — the only tree in the place, 
— now bare and disconsolate, but erelong to break 
into foliage, and be an aviary for the songs of 
summer. 

In person, the deceased poet was tall, with a 
slight stoop. His head was not large, but his 
temperament was of the keenest and brightest 
edge. With black curling hair, eyes dark, large, 
and lustrous, and a complexion of almost feminine 
delicacy, his appearance never failed to make a 
favorable impression on strangers. Yet with some 
of his fastest friends — such as Dobell and Mrs. 
Nichol — he never became personally acquainted. 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 57 

That he was gifted with poetic genius there is 
enough, I think, in his brief life-story, apart alto- 
gether from his lyrical achievements, to prove. 
No mere flash of vanity could so have shaped 
itself into the nimbus of a genuine inspiration. 
What further evidence of supreme endowment he 
might have furnished to the world, had he lived, 
we can only of course guess. Morally, he was, as 
far as I can discover, singularly pure, and worthy 
of the kindly interest which he awakened in so 
many quarters. One overmastering passion — an 
ever-burning desire for fame — had apparently swal- 
lowed up every other in his bosom. The simple 
love of poetry he may have been too apt to in- 
terpret as the essential and celestial gift. He may 
have been too apt to mistake the whisperings of 
ambition and conceit for the authentic oracles of 
prophecy. But, on the other hand, is not a strong, 
irrepressible, deeply-inherent impulse but the quick- 
ening, in many cases, of veritable power ? At all 
events, looking at the superlative struggle of this 
son of a Scotch handloom weaver, and at its sad, 
unsatisfied end, generous readers — and readers 
who are not generous can never be wholly just — 
will recognize in him a spirit freeing itself, at 
the very outset of life, from all grovelling con- 
3 * 



58 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

tagion, shaping forth its own magnificent destiny, 
and pursuing its divine ideal with the steadfast- 
ness of an angelic will. How far his posthumous 
writings may win for him the laurels for which, 
through every accident of fortune, he incessantly 
sighed and toiled, I hesitate to predict. Inasmuch, 
however, as there are many who knew and loved 
him, and will dwell often and fondly on his pages, 
— the unfinished columns of a temple suddenly ar- 
rested in the building, — the words of the mighty 
master may be fairly, not foolishly or falsely ap- 
plied : — 

" Death makes no conquest of this conqueror ; 
For now he lives in Fame, though not in life." 

J. H. 

Glasgow. 




FINAL MEMORIALS. 



SITUATED in a by-road, about a mile from the 
small town of Kirkintilloch, and eight miles 
from the city of Glasgow, stands a cottage one 
story high, roofed with slate, and surrounded by 
a little kitchen-garden. A whitewashed lobby, 
leading from the front to the back door, divides 
this cottage into two sections : to the right is a 
room fitted up as a handloom-weaver's workshop ; 
to the left is a kitchen paved with stone, and open- 
ing into a tiny carpeted bedroom. 

In the workshop, a father, daughter, and sons 
work all day long at the loom. In the kitchen, a 
handsome, cheery Scottish matron busies herself 
like a thrifty housewife, and brings the rest of the 
family about her at meals. All day long the soft 
hum of the loom is heard in the workshop ; but 
when night comes, mysterious doors are thrown 



60 FINAL MEMORIALS. 

open, and the family retires to sleep in extraor- 
dinary mural recesses. 

In this humble home David Gray, the handloom- 
weaver, has resided for upwards of twenty years, 
and managed to rear a family of eight children, — 
five boys and three girls. His eldest son, David, 
author of The Luggie and other Poems, is the hero 
of the present true history. 

David was born on the 29th of January, 1838. 
He alone, of all the little household, was destined 
to receive a decent education. From early child- 
hood the dark-eyed little fellow was noted for his 
wit and cleverness ; and it became the dream of 
his father's life that he should become a scholar. 
At the parish-school of Kirkintilloch he learned to 
read, write, and cast up accounts, and was, more- 
over, iustructed in the Latin rudiments. Partly 
through the hard struggles of his parents, and 
partly through his own severe labors as a pupil- 
teacher and private tutor, he was afterwards en- 
abled to attend the classes at the Glasgow Uni- 
versity. In common with other rough country 
lads, who live up dark alleys, subsist chiefly on 
oatmeal and butter, forwarded from home, and 
eventually distinguish themselves in the class- 
room, he had to fight his way onward amid pov- 



FINAL MEMORIALS. 61 

erty and privation ; but in his brave pursuit of 
knowledge nothing daunted him. It had been set- 
tled at home that he should become a minister of 
the Free Church of Scotland. Unfortunately, how- 
ever, he had no love for the pulpit. Early in life 
he had begun to hanker after the delights of poet- 
ical composition. He had devoured the poets from 
Chaucer to Tennyson. The yearnings thus awak- 
ened in him had begun to express themselves in 
many wild fragments, — contributions, for the most 
part, to the poet's-corner of a local newspaper, — 
The Glasgow Citizen. 

Up to this point there was nothing extraordinary 
in the career or character of David Gray. Taken 
at his best, he was an average specimen of the 
persevering young Scottish student. But his soul 
contained wells of emotion which had not yet been 
stirred to their depths. When, at fourteen years 
of age, he began to study in Glasgow, it was his 
custom to go home every Saturday night, in order 
to pass the Sunday with his parents. These Sun- 
days at home were chiefly occupied with rambles 
in the neighborhood of Kirkintilloch ; wanderings 
on the sylvan banks of the Luggie, the beloved 
little river which flowed close to his father's door. 
In Luggieside awakened one day the dream which 



62 FINAL MEMORIALS. 

developed all the hidden beauty of his character, 
and eventually kindled all the faculties of his in- 
tellect. Had he been asked to explain the nature 
of this dream, David would have answered vaguely 
enough, but he would have said something to the 
following effect : " I 'm thinking none of us are 
quite contented ; there 's a climbing impulse to 
heaven in us all that won't let us rest for a mo- 
ment. Just now I 'd be happy if I knew a little 
more. I 'd give ten years of life to see Rome, and 
Florence, and Venice, and the grand places of old ; 
and to feel that I was n't a burden on the old folks. 
I '11 be a great man yet ! and the old home — the 
Luggie and Lartshore Wood — shall be famous for 
my sake." He could only have measured his am- 
bition by the love he bore his home. " I was 
born, bred, and cared for here, and my folk are 
buried here. I know every nook and dell for 
miles around, and they 're all dear to me. My 
own mother and father dwell here, and in my own 
wee room (the tiny carpeted bedroom above al- 
luded to) I first learned to read poetry. I love 
my home ; and it 's for my home's sake that I love 
fame." 

At twenty-one years of age, when this dream was 
strongest in him, David was a tall young man, 



FINAL MEMORIALS. 63 

slightly but firmly built, and with a stoop at the 
shoulders. His head was small, fringed with black 
curly hair. Want of candor was not his fault, 
though he seldom looked one in the face ; his eyes, 
however, were large and dark, full of intelligence and 
humor, harmonizing well with the long thin nose and 
nervous lips. The great black eyes and woman's 
mouth betrayed the creature of impulse ; one whose 
reasoning faculties were small, but whose tempera- 
ment was like red-hot coal. He sympathized with 
much that was lofty, noble, and true in poetry, and 
with much that was absurd and suicidal in the poet. 
He carried sympathy to the highest pitch of enthu- 
siasm ; he shed tears over the memories of Keats 
and Burns, and he was corybantic in his execution 
of a Scotch "reel." A fine phrase filled him with 
the rapture of a lover. He admired extremes, — 
from Rabelais to Tom Sayers. Thirsting for human 
sympathy, which lured him in the semblance of 
notoriety, he perpetrated all sorts of extravagances, 
innocent enough in themselves, but calculated to 
blind him to the very first principles of art. Yet 
this enthusiasm, as we have suggested, was his 
safeguard in at least one respect. Though he be- 
lieved himself to be a genius, he loved the parental 
roof of the handloom weaver. 



64 FINAL MEMORIALS. 

And what thought the weaver and his wife of this 
wonderful son of theirs ? They were proud of him, 
— proud in a silent, undemonstrative fashion; for 
among the Scottish poor concealment of the emo- 
tions is held a virtue. During his weekly visits 
home, David was not overwhelmed with caresses ; 
but he was the subject of conversation night after 
night, when the old couple talked in bed. Between 
him and his father there had arisen a strange barrier 
of reserve. They seldom exchanged with each 
other more than a passing word ; but to one friend's 
bosom David would often confide the love and ten- 
derness he bore for his overworked, upright parent. 
When the boy first began to write verses, the old 
man affected perfect contempt and indifference, but 
his eyes gloated in secret over the poet's-corners of 
the Glasgow newspapers. The poor weaver, though 
an uneducated man, had a profound respect for edu- 
cation and cultivation in others. He felt his heart 
bound with hope and joy when strangers praised the 
boy, but he hid the tenderness of his pride under a 
cold indifference. He was proud of David's talent 
for writing verses, but he was afraid to encourage a 
pursuit which practical common sense assured him 
was mere trifling. At a later date he might have 
spoken out, had not his tongue been frozen by the 



FINAL MEMORIALS. 65 

belief that advice from him would be held in no 
esteem by his better educated and more gifted son. 
Thus, the more David's indications of cleverness 
and scholarship increased, the more afraid was the 
old man to express his gratification and give his 
advice. Equally touching was the point of view 
taken by David's mother, whose cry was, " The 
kirk, the free kirk, and nothing but the kirk ! " She 
neither appreciated nor underrated the abilities of 
her boy, but her proudest wish was that he should 
become a real live minister, with home and " hau- 
din' " of his own. To see David — " our David " — 
in a pulpit, preaching the Gospel out of a big book, 
and dwelling in a good house to the end of his 
days ! 

Meantime, David was plotting and planning. 
Dissatisfied with his earlier efforts — which had con- 
sisted chiefly of crude imitations of Wordsworth 
and Keats — he began a play on the Shakespearian 
model. This ambitious effort, however, was soon 
relinquished for a dearer, sweeter task, — the com- 
position of a pastoral poem descriptive of the sce- 
nery surrounding his home, and to be entitled The 
Luggie. 

David naturally belonged to that third class of 
poets, the members of which are so intensely sub- 



66 FINAL MEMORIALS. 

jective, that they can never attain the very highest 
intellectual rank, and whose work can never be crit- 
icised apart from themselves. It was lucky, there- 
fore, that the morbid self-assertion of the school to 
which he belonged was counteracted, in his case, by 
a noble, an unselfish feeling. Had David lived to 
mature himself, the devotional fondness for his home 
would have been sobered down a little ; but it would 
always have served to distinguish him from the 
egotistic Phaethons, who essay wild flights to the 
sun, and those intellectual Tantaluses, who are per- 
petually marring success by the morbid contempla- 
tion of their own misfortunes. In point of fact, 
David was too sensitive ever to be happy. 

Early in his teens David had made the acquaint- 
ance of a young man of Glasgow, with whom his 
fortunes were destined to be intimately woven, and 
whom we shall call Robert Blank. The two friends 
spent year after year in intimate communion, vary- 
ing the monotony of their existence by reading 
books together, plotting great works, and writing 
extravagant letters to men of eminence. Whole 
nights and days were passed in seclusion in read- 
ing the great thinkers, and pondering on their 
lives. Full of thoughts too deep for utterance, 
dreaming, David would walk at a swift pace 



FINAL MEMORIALS. 67 

through the crowded streets, with face bent down, 
and eyes fixed on the ground, taking no heed of 
the human beings passing to and fro. Then he 
would go to Blank, crying, " I have had a dream," 
and would forthwith tell of visionary pictures which 
had haunted him in his solitary walk. This "dream- 
ing," as he called it, consumed the greater portion 
of his hours of leisure. 

Towards the end of the year 1859, David became 
convinced that he could no longer idle away the 
hours of his youth. His work as student and as 
pupil-teacher was ended, and he must seek some 
means of subsistence. He imagined, too, that his 
poor parents threw dull looks on the beggar of 
their bounty. Having abandoned all thoughts of 
entering into the Church, for which neither his 
taste nor his opinions fitted him, what should he 
do in order to earn his daily bread ? His first 
thought was to turn schoolmaster ; but no ! the 
notion was an odious one. He next endeavored, 
without success, to procure himself a situation on 
one of the Glasgow newspapers. Meantime, while 
drifting from project to project, he maintained a 
voluminous correspondence, in the hope of per- 
suading some eminent man to read his poem of 
The Luggie. Unfortunately, the persons to whom 



68 FINAL MEMORIALS. 

he wrote were too busy to pay much attention to 
the solicitations of an entire stranger. Repeated 
disappointments only increased his self-assertion ; 
the less chance there seemed of an improvement 
in his position, and the less strangers seemed to 
recognize his genius, the more dogged was his 
conviction that he was destined to be a great poet. 
His letters were full of this conviction. To one 
entire stranger he wrote, " I am a poet ; let that 
be understood distinctly." Again: "I tell you 
that, if I live, my name and fame shall be second 
to few of any age, and to none of my own. I 
speak thus because I feel power." Again : "I 
am so accustomed to compare my own mental 
progress with that of such men as Shakespeare, 
Goethe, and Wordsworth, that the dream of my 
life will not be fulfilled, if my fame equal not, at 
least, that of the latter of these three ! " This 
was extraordinary language, and we are not sur- 
prised that little heed was paid to it. Let some 
explanation be given here. No man could be more 
humble, reverent-minded, self-doubting, than David 
was in reality. Indeed, he was constitutionally 
timid of his own abilities, and he was personally 
diffident. In his letters only, he absolutely en- 
deavored to wrest from his correspondents some 



FINAL MEMORIALS. 69 

recognition of his claim to help and sympathy. 
The moment sympathy came, no matter how coldly 
it might be expressed, he was all humility and 
gratitude. In this spirit, after one of his wildest 
flights of self-assertion, he wrote, " When I read 
Thomson, I despair." Again: "Being bare of all 
recommendations, I lied with my own conscience, 
deeming that if I called myself a great man you 
were bound to believe me." Again : " If you saw 
me, you would wonder if the quiet, bashful, boy- 
ish-looking fellow before you was the author of all 
yon blood and thunder." 

All at once there flashed upon David and Blank 
the notion of going to London, and taking the lit- 
erary fortress by storm. Again and again they 
talked the project over, and again and again they 
hesitated. In the spring of 1860 both found them- 
selves without an anchorage ; each found it neces- 
sary to do something for daily bread. For some 
little time the London scheme had been in abey- 
ance ; but, on the 3d May, 1860, David came to 
Blank, his lips firmly compressed, his eyes full of 
fire, saying, "Bob, I'm off to London." "Have 
you funds ? " asked Blank. " Enough for one, not 
enough for two," was the reply. " If you can 
get the money any how, we '11 go together." 



TO FINAL MEMORIALS. 

When the friends parted, they arranged to meet 
on the evening of the 5th May, in time to catch 
the five o'clock train. Unfortunately, however, 
they neglected to specify which of the two Glas- 
gow stations was intended. At the hour appointed 
David left Glasgow by one line of railway, in the 
belief that Blank had been unable to join him, but 
determined to try the venture alone. With the 
same belief and determination, Blank left at the 
same hour by the other line of railway. The 
friends arrived in different parts of London at 
about the same time. Had they left Glasgow in 
company, or had they met immediately after their 
arrival in London, the story of David's life might 
not have been so brief and sorrowful. 

Though the month was May, the weather was 
dark, damp, cloudy. On arriving in the metropo- 
lis, David wandered about for hours, carpet-bag in 
hand. The magnitude of the place overwhelmed 
him ; he was lost in that great ocean of life. He 
thought about Johnson and Savage, and how they 
wandered through London with pockets more empty 
than his own ; but already he longed to be back 
in the little carpeted bedroom in the weaver's cot- 
tage. How lonely it seemed ! Among all that 
mist of human faces there was not one to smile 



FINAL MEMORIALS. *\\ 

in welcome ; and how was he to make his trem- 
bling voice beard above the roar and tumult of 
those streets ? The very policemen seemed to 
look suspiciously at the stranger. To his sensi- 
tively Scottish ear the language spoken seemed 
quite strange and foreign ; it had a painful, home- 
less sound about it, that sank nervously on the 
heart-strings. As he wandered about the streets, 
he glanced into coffee-shop after coffee-shop, see- 
ing " beds " ticketed in each fly-blown window. 
His pocket contained a sovereign and a few shil- 
lings, but he would need every penny. Would 
not a bed be useless extravagance ? he asked him- 
self. Certainly. Where, then, should he pass the 
night ? In Hyde Park ! He had heard so much 
about this part of London that the name was quite 
familiar to him. Yes, he would pass the night in 
the Park. Such a proceeding would save money, 
and be exceedingly romantic ; it would be just the 
right sort of beginning for a poet's struggle in 
London ! So he strolled into the great Park, and 
wandered about its purlieus till morning. In re- 
marking upon this foolish conduct, one must reflect 
that David was strong, heartsome, full of healthy 
youth. It was a frequent boast of his that he 
scarcely ever had a day's illness. 



?2 FINAL MEMORIALS. 

Whether or not his fatal complaint was caught 
during this his first night in London is uncertain, 
but some few days afterwards David wrote thus 
to his father : " By the by, I have had the worst 
cold I ever had in my life. I cannot get it away 
properly, but I feel a great deal better to-day." 
Alas ! violent cold had settled down upon his 
lungs, and insidious death was already slowly ap- 
proaching him. So little conscious was he of his 
danger, however, that we find him writing to a 
friend : " What brought me here ? God knows, 
for I don't. Alone in such a place is a horrible 

thing People don't seem to understand me. 

.... Westminster Abbey ; I was there all day 
yesterday. If T live I shall be buried there, — so 
help me God! A completely defined consciousness 
of great poetical genius is my only antidote against 
utter despair and despicable failure." 

What were David's qualifications for a struggle 
in which, year after year, hundreds miserably per- 
ish ? Considerable knowledge of Greek, Latin, and 
French, great miscellaneous reading, a clerkly hand- 
writing, and a bold purpose ; these were slender 
qualifications, but, while health lasted, there was 
hope. 

David and Blank did not meet until upwards of 



FINAL MEMORIALS. ?3 

a week after their arrival in London, but each had 
soon been apprised of the other's presence in the 
city. Finally, they .came together. David's first 
impulse was to describe his lodgings, situated in 
a by-street in the Borough. "A cold, cheerless 
bedroom, Bob : nothing but a blanket to cover 
me. For God's sake, get me out of it ! " The 
friends were walking side by side in the neighbor- 
hood of the New Cut, looking about them with 
curious, puzzled eyes, and now and then drawing 
each other's attention to sundry objects of interest. 
" Have you been well ? " inquired Blank. " First- 
rate," answered David, looking as merry as possi- 
ble. Nor did he show any indications whatever 
of illness. He seemed hopeful, energetic, full of 
health and spirits ; his sole desire was to change 
his lodging. It was not without qualms that he 
surveyed the dingy, smoky neighborhood where 
Blank resided. The sun was shedding dismal crim- 
son light on the chimney-pots, and the twilight 
was slowly thickening. The two climbed up three 
flights of stairs to Blank's bedroom. Dingy as 
it was, this appartment seemed, in David's eyes, 
quite a palatial sanctum ; and it was arranged that 
the friends should take up their residence together. 
As speedily as possible, Blank procured David's 

4 



U FINAL MEMORIALS. 

little stock of luggage ; then, settled face to face 
as in old times, both made very merry. 

Blank's first idea, on questioning David about 
his prospects, was that his friend had had the 
best of luck. You see, the picture drawn on 
either side was a golden one ; but the brightness 
soon melted away. It turned out that David, on 
arriving in London, had sought out certain gentle- 
men whom he had formerly favored with his cor- 
respondence, — among others, Mr. Richard Monck- 
ton Milnes, now Lord Houghton. Though not a 
little astonished at the appearance of the boy-poet, 
Mr. Milnes had received him kindly, assisted him 
to the best of his power, and made some work 
for him in the shape of manuscript-copying. The 
same gentleman had also used his influence with 
literary people, — to very little purpose, however. 
The real truth turned out to be that David was 
disappointed and low-spirited. " It's weary work, 
Bob ; they don't understand me ; I wish I was 
back in Glasgow." It was now that David told 
his friend all about that first day and night in 
London, and how he had already begun a poem 
about "Hyde Park," how Mr. Milnes had been 
good to him, had said that he was "a poet," but 
had insisted on his going back to Scotland, and 



FINAL MEMORIALS. 75 

becoming a minfster. David did not at all like the 
notion of returning home. He thought he had 
every chance of making his way in London. About 
this time he was bitterly disappointed by the rejec- 
tion of "The Luggie" by Mr. Thackeray, to whom 
Mr. Milnes had sent it, with a recommendation that 
it should be inserted in the Gornhill Magazine. The 
poem, however, for half a dozen reasons, was utterly 
unsuited to the pages of a popular periodical. 

Mr. Milnes was the first to perceive that the 
young adventurer was seriously ill. After a hur- 
ried call on his patron one day in May, David re- 
joined Blank in the near neighborhood. " Milnes 
says I 'm to go home and keep warm, and he '11 
send his own doctor to me." This was done. The 
doctor came, examined David's chest, said very 
little, and went away, leaving strict orders that 
the invalid should keep within doors, and take 
great care of himself. Neither David nor Blank 
liked the expression of the doctor's face at all. 

It soon became evident that David's illness was of 
a most serious character. Pulmonary disease had set 
in ; medicine, blistering, all the remedies employed 
in the early stages of his complaint, seemed of little 
avail. Just then David read the Life of John Keats, 
a book which impressed him with a nervous fear of 



16 FINAL MEMORIALS. 

impending dissolution. He began to be filled with 
conceits droller than any he had imagined in health. 
" If I were to meet Keats in heaven," he said one 
day, " I wonder if I should know his face from his 
pictures ? " Most frequently his talk was of labor 
uncompleted, hope deferred ; and he began to pant 
for free country air. "If I die," he said, on a 
certain occasion, " I shall have one consolation, — 
Milnes will write an introduction to the poems." 
At another time, with tears in his eyes, he re- 
peated Burns's epitaph. Now and then, too, he 
had his fits of frolic and humor, and would laugh 
and joke over his unfortunate position. It cannot 
be said that Mr. Milnes and his friends were at 
all lukewarm about the case of their young friend ; 
on the contrary, they gave him every practical as- 
sistance. Mr. Milnes himself, full of the most del- 
icate sympathy, trudged to and fro between his own 
house and the invalid's lodging ; his pockets laden 
with jelly and beef-tea, and his tongue tipped with 
kindly comfort. Had circumstances permitted, he 
would have taken the invalid into his own house. 
Unfortunately, however, David was compelled to re- 
main, in company with Blank, in a chamber which 
seemed to have been constructed peculiarly for the 
purpose of making the occupants as uncomfortable 



FINAL MEMORIALS. 77 

as possible. There were draughts everywhere : 
through the chinks of the door, through the win- 
dows, down the chimney, and up through the floor- 
ing. When the wind blew, the whole tenement 
seemed on the point of crumbling to atoms ; when 
the rain fell, the walls exuded moisture ; when the 
sun shone, the sunshine only served to increase the 
characteristic dinginess of the furniture. Occasional 
visitors, however, could not be fully aware of these 
inconveniences. It was in the night-time, and in 
bad weather, that they were chiefly felt ; and it 
required a few clays' experience to test the super- 
lative discomfort of what David (in a letter written 
afterwards) styled " the dear old ghastly bankrupt 
garret." His stay in these quarters was destined 
to be brief. Gradually, the invalid grew homesick. 
Nothing would content him but a speedy return to 
Scotland. He was carefully sent off by train, and 
arrived safely in his little cottage home far north. 
Great, meanwhile, had been the commotion in the 
handloom weaver's cottage, after the receipt of this 
bulletin, " I start off to-night at five o'clock by the 
Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, right on to Lon- 
don, in good health and spirits." A great cry arose 
in the household. He was fairly "daft" ; he was 
throwing away all his chances in the world ; the 



18 FINAL MEMORIALS. 

verse-writing had turned his head. Father and 
mother mourned together. The former, though in- 
competent to judge literary merit of any kind, per- 
ceived that David was hot-headed, only half-educat- 
ed, and was going to a place where thousands of 
people were starving daily. But the suspense was 
not to last long. The darling son, the secret hope 
and pride, came back to the old people sick to 
death. All rebuke died away before the pale, sad 
face, and the feeble, tottering body ; and David was 
welcomed to the cottage hearth with silent prayers. 
They set him in the old place beside the fire, and 
hushed the house. The mother went about her 
work with a heavy heart ; the father, when the 
day's toil was over, sat down before the kitchen 
fire, smoking his pipe, speaking very little, and 
looking sternly at the castles that crumbled away 
in the blazing coal. 

It was now placed beyond a doubt that the dis- 
ease was one of mortal danger ; yet David, sur- 
rounded again by his old Lares, busied himself with 
many bright and delusive dreams of ultimate re- 
covery. Pictures of a pleasant, dreamy convales- 
cence in a foreign clime floated before him morn and 
night, and the fairest and dearest of the dreams was 
Italy. Previous to his departure for London, he 



FINAL MEMORIALS. 79 

had concocted a wild scheme for visiting Florence, 
and throwing himself on the poetical sympathy of 
Robert Browning. He had even thought of enlist- 
ing in the English Garibaldian Corps, and by that 
means gaining his cherished wish. "How about 
Italy ? " he wrote to Blank, after returning home. 
" Do you still entertain its delusive motions ? Pour 
out your soul before me: I am as a child." All at 
once a new dream burst upon him. A local doctor 
insisted that the invalid should be removed to a 
milder climate, and recommended Natal. In a letter 
full of coaxing tenderness, David besought Blank, 
for the sake of old days, to accompany him thither. 
Blank answered indecisively, but immediately made 
all endeavors to grant his friend's wish. Meantime, 
he received the following, which we give as a fair 
specimen of David's epistolary style : — 

" Merkland, Kirkintilloch, lOtk November, 1860. 
" Ever dear Bob, — Your letter causes me some uneasiness ; not 
but that your numerous objections are numerous and vital enough, 
but they convey the sad and firm intelligence that you cannot come 
with me. I. — It is absolutely impossible for you to raise a sum 
sufficient ! Now you know it is not necessary that I should go to 
Natal ; nay, I have, in very fear, given up the thought of it ; but 
we — or I — could go to Italy or Jamaica, — this latter, as I learn, 
being the more preferable. Nor has there been any ' crisis ' 



80 FINAL MEMORIALS. 

come, as you say, I would n't cause you much trouble (forgive me 
for hinting this), but I believe we could be happy as in the dear 

old times. Dr. (whose addi-ess I don't know), supposes that I 

shall be able to work (?) when I reach a more genial climate ; and 
if that should prove the result, why, it is a consummation devoutly 
to be wished. But the matter of money bothers me. What I 
wrote to you was all hypothetical, — i. e. things have been carried 
so far, but I have not heard whether or not the subscription had 
been gone on with. And, supposing for one instant the utterly 
preposterous supposition that I had money to carry us both, then 
comes the II. objection, — your dear mother ! I am not so far 
gone, though I fear far enough, to ignore that blessed feeling. 
But if it were for your good ? Before God, if I thought it would 
in any way harm your health (that cannot be) or your hopes, I 
would never have mooted the proposal. On the contrary, I feel 
from my heart that it would benefit you ; and how much would it 
not benefit me. But I am baking without flour. The cash is not 
in my hand, and I fear never will be ; the amount I would require 
is not so easily gathered. 

" Dobell * is again laid up. He is at the Isle of Wight, at some 

* Sydney Dobell, author of Balder, The Roman, &c. This gentle- 
man's kindness to David, whom he never saw, is beyond all praise. 
Nor was the invalid ungrateful. " Poor, kind, half-immortal spirit 
here below," wrote David, alluding to Dobell, " shall I know thee 
when we meet new-born into eternal existence? .... Dear friend 
Bob, did you ever know a nobler? I cannot get him out of my mind. 
I would write to him daily, would it not pest him. Yet, as you and I 
know, nothing can pest him. What he has done for me is enormous; 
almost as much as what you have done; almost as much as I long to 
do for both of you." Again and again, in much the same words, did 
he repeat this affectionate plaint. 



FINAL MEMORIALS. 81 

establishment called the Victoria Baths. I am told that his friends 
deem his life in constant danger. He asks for your address. I 
shall send it only to-day ; wait until you hear what he has got to 
say. He would prefer me to go to Brompton Hospital. / would 
do anywhere for a change. If I don't get money somehow or some- 
■'here, I shall die of ennui. A weary desire for change, life, ex- 
citement, of every, any kind, possesses me, and without you what am 
I? There is no other person in the world whom I could spend a 
week with, and thoroughly enjoy it. how I desire to smoke a 
cigar, and have a pint and a chat with you. 

" By the way, how are you getting on ? Have you lots to 
do ? and well paid for it 1 Or is life a lottery with you ? and 
the tea-caddy a vacuum 1 and a snare ? and a night- 
mare ? Do you dream yet on your old rickety sofa in the dear 
old ghastly bankrupt garret at No. 66 ? Write to yours eternally, 

" David Gray." 

The proposal to go abroad was soon abandoned, 
partly because the invalid began to evince a ner- 
vous homesickness, but chiefly because it was im- 
possible to raise a sum of money sufficient. But 
a residence in Kirkintilloch throughout the winter 
was, on all accounts, to be avoided. A friend, 
therefore, subscribed to the Brompton Hospital for 
chest complaints, for the express purpose of pro- 
curing David admission. One bleak wintry day, 
not long after the receipt of the above letter, Blank 
was gazing out of his lofty lodging-window, when 

4* T 



82 FINAL MEMORIALS. 

a startling vision presented itself, in the shape of 
David himself, seated with qnite a gay look in an 
open Hansom cab. In a minute the friends were 
side by side, and one of Blank's first impulses was 
to rebuke David for the folly of exposing himself, 
during such weather, in such a vehicle. This folly, 
however, was on a parallel with David's general 
habits of thought. Sometimes, indeed, the poor 
boy became unusually thoughtful, as when, during 
his illness, he wrote thus to Blank : " Are you 
remembering that you will need clothes ? These 
are things you take no concern about, and so you 
may be seedy without knowing it. By all means 
hoard a few pounds if you can (/ require none) for 
any emergency like this. Brush your excellent 
topcoat, — it is the best and warmest I ever had 
on my back. Mind, you have to pay ready money 
for any new coat. A seedy man will not ' get on ' 
if he requires, like you, to call personally on his 
employers." The mother of a family might have 
written the foregoing. 

David had come to London in order to go either 
to Brompton or to Torquay, — the hospital at which 
last-named place was thrown open to him by Mr. 
Milnes. Perceiving his dislike for the Temperance 
Hotel, to which he had been conducted, Blank con- 



FINAL MEMORIALS. 83 

sented that he should stay in the " ghastly bank- 
rupt garret " until he should depart to one or other 
of the hospitals. It was finally arranged that he 
should accept a temporary invitation to a hydro- 
pathic establishment at Sudbrook Park, Richmond. 
Thither Blank at once conveyed him. Meanwhile, 
his prospects were diligently canvassed by his nu- 
merous friends. His own feelings at this time were 
well expressed in a letter home. "I am dreadfully 
afraid of Brompton : living among sallow, dolorous, 
dying consumptives is enough to kill me. Here 
I am as comfortable as can be : a fire in my room 
all day, plenty of meat, and good society, — nobody 
so ill as myself ; but there, perhaps hundreds far 
worse (the hospital holds 218 in ail stages of the 
disease, — 90 of them died last report), dying be- 
side me, perhaps — it frightens me." All at once 
David began, with a delicacy peculiar to him, to 
consider himself an unwarrantable intruder at Sud- 
brook Park. In the face of all persuasion, there- 
fore, he joined Blank in London, — whence he 
shortly afterwards departed for Torquay. 

He left Blank in good spirits, — full of pleasant 
anticipations of Devonshire scenery. But the sec- 
ond day after his departure he addressed to Blank 
a wild epistle, dated from one of the Torquay hotels. 



84 FINAL MEMORIALS. 

He had arrived safe and sound, he said, and had 
been kindly received by a friend of Mr. Milnes. 
He had at first been delighted with the town, and 
everything in it. He had gone to the hospital, had 
been received by " a nurse of death" (as he phrased 
it), and had been inducted into the pi'ivileges of 
the place ; but on seeing his fellow-patients, some 
in the last stages of disease, he had fainted away. 
On coming to himself, he obtained an interview 
with the matron. To his request for a private 
apartment, she had answered, that to favor him in 
that way would be to break written rules, and that 
he must content himself with the common privi- 
leges of the establishment. On leaving the ma- 
tron, he had furtively stolen from the place, and 
made his way through the night to the hotel. Be- 
fore Blank had time to comprehend the state of 
affairs, there came a second letter, stating that 
David was on the point of starting for London. 
" Every ring at the hotel-bell makes me tremble, 
fancying they are coming to take me away by 
force. Had you seen the nurse ! that I were 
back again at home, — mother ! mother 1 mother ! " 
A few hours after Blank had read these lines in 
miserable fear, arrived Gray himself, pale, anxious, 
and trembling. He flung himself into Blank's 



FINAL MEMORIALS. 85 

arms, with a smile of sad relief. " Thank God ! " 
he cried; "that's over, and I am here!" Then 
his cry was for home ; he would die if he remained 
longer adrift ; he must depart at once. Blank per- 
suaded him to wait for a few days, and in the 
mean time saw some of his influential friends. The 
skill and regimen of a medical establishment being 
necessary to him at this stage, it was naturally 
concluded that he should go to Brompton ; but 
David, in a high state of nervous excitement, 
scouted the idea. Disease had sapped the foun- 
dations of the once strong spirit. "Home — home 

— home ! " was his hourly cry. To resist these 
frantic appeals would have been to hasten the end 
of all. In the midst of winter, Blank saw him into 
the train at Euston Square. A day afterwards, 
David was in the bosom of his father's household, 

— never more to pass thence alive. Not long after 
his arrival at home he repented his rash flight. " I 
am not at all contented with my position. I acted 
like a fool ; but if the hospital were the sine qua 
non, again my conduct would be the same." Fur- 
ther : " I lament my own foolish conduct, but what 
was that quotation about impellunt in Acheron ? It 
was all nervous impulsion. However, I despair not, 
and, least of all, my dear fellow, to those whom I 
have deserted wrongfully." 



86 FINAL MEMORIALS. 

Erelong, poor David made up his mind that he 
must die ; and this feeling urged him to write some- 
thing which would keep his memory green forever. 
" I am working away at my old poem, Bob : leaven- 
ing it throughout with the pure, beautiful theology 
of Kingsley." A little later : "By the by, I have 
about 600 lines of my poem written, but the manual 
labor is so weakening that I do not go on." Nor 
was this all. In the very shadow of the grave, he 
began and finished a series of sonnets on the subject 
of his own disease and impending death. These 
sonnets will not be appreciated at their true value 
yet a while, but they contain poetry as pathetically 
beautiful as the following : — 

The daisy-flower is to the summer sweet, 

Though utterly unknown it live and die ; 
The spheral harmony were incomplete 

Did the dewed laverock mount no more the sky, 

Because her music's hushed sorcery 
Bewitched no mortal heart to heavenly mood. 

This is the law of nature, that the deed 
Should dedicate its excellence to God, 

And in so doing find sufficient meed. 
Then why should I make these heart-burning cries 

In sickly rhyme with morbid feeling rife, 
For Tame and temporal felicities 3 
Forgetting that in holy labor lies 

The scholarship severe of human life. 



FINAL MEMORIALS. 87 

This increased literary energy was not, as many peo- 
ple imagined, a sign of increased physical strength ; 
it was merely the last flash upon the blackening 
brand. Gradually, but surely, life was ebbing 
away from the young poet. In April, 1861, Blank 
saw him for the last time, and heard him speak 
words which showed the abandonment of hope. 
"I am dying," said David, leaning back in his 
arm-chair in the little carpeted bedroom ; " I am 
dying, and I 've only two things to regret : that 
my poem is not published, and that I have not 
seen Italy." In the endeavor to inspire hope, 
Blank spoke of the happy past, and of happy 
days yet to be. David only shook his head with 
a sad smile. " It is the old dream, — only a dream, 
Bob, — but I am content." He spoke of all his 
friends with tenderness, and of his parents with 
intense and touching love. Then it was " fare- 
well ! " "After all our dreams of the future," he 
said, "I must leave you to fight alone; but shall 
there be no more ' cakes and ale ' because I die ? " 
Blank returned to London ; and erelong heard that 
David was eagerly attempting to get The Lug- 
gie published. Delay after delay occurred. " If 
my book be not immediately gone on with, I fear 
I may never see it. Disease presses closely on 



88 FINAL MEMORIALS. 

me The merit of my manuscripts is very 

little, — mere hints of better things, — crude notions 
harshly languaged ; but that must be overlooked. 
They are left not to the world (wild thought !), 
but as the simple, possible, sad, only legacy I can 
leave to those who have loved and love me." At 
last, through the agency of Mr. Dobell, the poem 
was placed in the hands of the printer. On the 
2d December, 1861, a specimen page was sent to 
the author. David gazed long and lingeringly on 
the printed page. It was "good news," he said. 
The next day the shadow fell on the weaver's 
household, for David was no more. Thus, on the 
3d December, he passed tranquilly away, almost his 
last words being, " God has love, and I have faith." 
On the Saturday after his death, his body was 
carried on hand-spokes (the old Scottish fashion) 
to the Auld Aisle Burying-ground, a lovely grave- 
yard, surrounded by a stone wall, and standing on 
an elevation at a short distance from the weaver's 
door. A solitary ash-tree waves over the grave, 
which is, as yet, unmarked by any memorial stone. 
Shortly after his death, The Luggie and oilier 
Poems was published by Messrs. Macmillan, of 
Cambridge, in a little volume, with an Introduction 
by Mr. Milnes, and a short Memoir. 



FINAL MEMORIALS. 89 

And David's poetry? We have said that it is 
jet too early to estimate that at its true value ; 
but it can never be read apart from the brief story 
of the writer. More than most men did David 
interweave his own personal joys and sufferings 
with the text of his ambitious verse. He was 
far too self-absorbed to possess dramatic power. 
His writings, however, have a pathos and an 
earnestness which we frequently look for in vain 
in the books of greater men. We will give one 
extract, which could only have been written by 
one in whom the faculty divine was strong, intense, 
and artistic. We may call it 

AN OCTOBER MUSING. 

Ere the last stack is housed, and woods are bare, 
And the vermilion fruitage of the brier 
Is soaked in mist, or shrivelled' up with frost ; 
Ere warm spring-nests are coldly to be seen 
Tenantless but for rain and the cold snow, 
While yet there is a loveliness abroad, — 
The frail and indescribable loveliness 
Of a fair form life with reluctance leaves, 
Being there only powerful, — while the earth 
Wears sackcloth in her great prophetic grief : — 

Then the reflective, melancholy soul, 
Aimlessly wandering with slow-falling feet 
The heathery solitude, in hope to assuage 



90 FINAL MEMORIALS. 

The cunning humor of his malady, 

Loses his painful bitterness, and feels 

His own specific sorrows one by one 

Taken up in the huge dolor of all things. 

O, the sweet melancholy of the time, 

When gently, ere the heart appeals, the year 

Shines in the fatal beauty of decay; 

"When the sun sinks enlarged on Carronben, 

Nakedly visible, without a cloud, 

And faintly from the faint eternal blue 

(That dim sweet harebell color) comes the star 

Which evening wears — when Luggie flows in mist, 

And in the cottage windows one by one, 

With sudden twinkle, household lamps are lit — 

What noiseless falling of the faded leaf! 

David's poetry abounds in passages full of this 
melancholy sweetness ; and the vein grew pro- 
founder as the hand that clutched at Fame grew 
weaker. 

"Whom the gods love die young," was David's 
favorite saying. In one of his last letters, the 
dying poet bade a friend "bless the ancient Greeks 
for that comfort ! " Perhaps it is a comfort that 
David sleeps in peace ; for which is better, sleep 
such as his, or the dark weary struggle for bread 
which must have been his lot had he lived ? Let 
the mind picture to itself a longer life for him, 
and see what that life might have been. He had 



FINAL MEMORIALS. 91 

not the power to sell his wits for money. The 
strong, hard scholar, the energetic man of busi- 
ness, has a shield against the demons of disap- 
pointed hope ; but David had no such shield. In 
life as well as in death there is a Plutonian house 
of exiles, and they abandon all hope who enter 
therein. Thither the fresh sun never penetrates, 
thither hope and joy never venture ; but poetry, 
ghastly with the brightness that has passed away, 
puts on the thin, shadowy raiments of the ghost, 
and glides about with a strange and haunting face, 
— a face full of the eternity of a faith that is 
lost, the apparition of the deep, aspiring heart 
whose religion is hope. Whom the gods love die 
young, — the weak ones like David, who has taken 
his unstained belief in things beautiful to the very 
fountain-head of all beauty, and who will never 
know the weary strife, the poignant heart-ache, of 
the unsuccessful endeavorers. 

On turning away from the contemplation of this 
lowly grave, the mind naturally reverts to the 
little weaver's household. There subsist tender 
sorrow and affectionate remembrance. The shadow 
still lies in the cottage ; a light has departed which 
will never again be seen on sea or land ; and the 
old weaver, seated by the fire at night, thinks 
mournfully of whac David might have been. " We 



92 FINAL MEMORIALS. 

feel very weary now David is gone," is all the 
plaint we ever heard him utter. With the eager 
sensitiveness of the poet himself, he read the va- 
rious criticisms on David's posthumous book. The 
great comfort of the humble home is that inex- 
pressibly pathetic "might have been," — a feeling 
which was beautifully indicated by David himself, 
in alluding to the premature fate of a young friend 
of his own : — 

Had he lived and fallen, (as who of us 
Doth perfectly 1 and let hirn that is proud 
Take heed lest he do fall,) he would have been 
A sadness to them in their aged hours. 
But now he is an honor and delight, 
A treasure of the memory, a joy 
Unutterable ; by the lone fireside 
They never tire to speak his praise, and say 
How, if he had been spared, he would have been 
So great, and good, and noble, as (they say) 
The country knows ; although I know full well 
That not a man in all the parish round 
Speaks of him ever ; he is now forgot, 
And this his natal valley knows him not. 

But David Gray will not so soon be forgotten by 
those who can pardon ambition, make allowances 
for youth, and sympathize with sorrow. 



POEMS. 
? 



THE LUGGIE. 




I HAT impulse which all beauty gives the 
soul 

Is languaged as I sing. For fairer stream 
Eolled never golden sand unto the sea, 
Made sweeter music than the Luggie, gloomed 
By glens whose melody mingles with her own. 
The uttered name my inmost being thrills, 
A word beyond a charm ; and if this lay 
Could smoothly flow along and wind to the end 
In natural manner, as the Luggie winds 
Her tortuous waters, then the world would list 
In sweet enthralment, swallowed up and lost, 
As he who hears the music that beguiles. 



96 THE LUGGIE. 

For as the pilgrim on warm summer days 
Pacing the dusty highway, when he sees 
The limpid silver glide with liquid lapse 
Between the emerald banks — with inward throe 
Blesses the clear enticement and partakes : 
(His hot face meeting its own counterpart 
Shadowy, from an unvoyageable sky) ; 
So would the people in these later days 
Listen the singing of a country song, 
A virelay of harmless homeliness ; 
These later days, when in most bookish rhymes 
Dear blessed Nature is forgot, and lost 
Her simple unelaborate modesty. 

And unto thee, my friend 1 thou prime of soul 
'Mong men ; I gladly bring my first-born song! 
"Would it were worthier for thy noble sake, 
True poet and true English gentleman ! 
Thy favors flattered me, thy praise inspired : 
Thy utter kindness took my heart, and now 



THE LUGGIE. 97 

Thy love alleviates my slow decline. 

Beneath an ash in beauty tender leaved, 

And through whose boughs the glimmering sunshine 

flowed 

In rare ethereal jasper, making cool 

A checkered shadow in the dark-green grass, 

I lay enchanted. At my head there bloomed 

A hedge of sweet-brier, fragrant as the breath 

Of maid beloved when her cheek is laid 

To yours in downy pressure, soft as sleep. 

A bank of harebells, flowers unspeakable 

For half-transparent azure, nodding, gleamed 

As a faint zephyr, laden with perfume, 

Kissed them to motion, gently, with no will. 

Before me streams, most dear unto my heart, 

Sweet Luggie, sylvan Bothlin — fairer twain 

Than ever sung themselves into the sea, 

Lucid iEgean, gemmed with sacred isles — 

Were rolled together in an emerald vale ; 

And into the severe bright noon, the smoke 
5 o 



98 THE LUGGIE. 

In airy circles o'er the sycamores 

Upcurled, — a lonely little cloud of blue 

Above the happy hamlet. Far away, 

A gently-rising hill, with umbrage clad, 

Hazel and glossy birch and silver fir, 

Met the keen sky. Oh, in that wood, I know, 

The woodruff and the hyacinth are fair 

In their own season ; with the bilberry, 

Of dim and misty blue, to childhood dear. 

Here, on a sunny August afternoon, 

A vision stirred my spirit, half-awake, 

To fling a purer lustre on those fields 

That knew my boyish footsteps ; and to sing 

Thy pastoral beauty, Luggie, into fame. 

Now, while the nights are long, by the dear hearth 

Of home I write ; and ere the mavis trills 

His smooth notes from the budding boughs of 

March, 
While the red windy morning o'er the east 
Widens, or while the lowly sky of eve 



THE LUGGIE. 99 

Burns like a topaz ; — all the dear design 
May reach completion, married to my song 
As far as words can syllable desire. 

May yet the inspiration and delight 
That proved my soul on that autumnal day, 
Be with me now, while o'er the naked earth 
Hushfully falls the soft, white, windless snow 1 

Once more, God, once more before I die, 
Before blind darkness and the wormy grave 
Contain me, and my memory fades away 
Like a sweet-colored evening, slowly, sad — 
Once more, God, thy wonders take my soul. 
A winter day ! the feather-silent snow 
Thickens the air with strange delight, and lays 
A fairy carpet on the barren lea. 
No sun, yet all around that inward light 
Which is in purity, — a soft moonshine, 
The silvery dimness of a happy dream. 

LOfC. 



100 THE LUGGIE. 

How beautiful ! afar on moorland ways, 

Bosomed by mountains, darkened by huge glens, 

(Where the lone altar raised by Druid hands 

Stands like a mournful phantom,) hidden clouds 

Let fall soft beauty, till each green fir branch 

Is plumed and tasselled, till each heather stalk 

Is delicately fringed. The sycamores, 

Through all their mystical entanglement 

Of boughs, are draped with silver. All the green 

Of sweet leaves playing with the subtle air 

In dainty murmuring ; the obstinate drone 

Of limber bees that in the monkshood bells 

House diligent; the imperishable glow 

Of summer sunshine never more confessed 

The harmony of nature, the divine 

Diffusive spirit of the Beautiful. 

Out in the snowy dimness, half revealed 

Like ghosts in glimpsing moonshine, wildly run 

The children in bewildering delight. 

There is a living glory in the air, — 



THE LUGGIE. 101 

A glory in the hushed air, in the soul 
A palpitating wonder hushed in awe. 

Softly — with delicate softness — as the light 
Quickens in the undawned east ; and silently — 
With definite silence — as the stealing dawn 
Dapples the floating clouds, slow fall, slow fall, 
With indecisive motion eddying down, 
The white-winged flakes, — calm as the sleep of 

sound, 
Dim as a dream. The silver-misted air 
Shines with mild radiance, as when through a cloud 
Of semi-lucent vapor shines the moon. 
I saw last evening (when the ruddy sun, 
Enlarged and strange, sank low and visibly, 
Spreading fierce orange o'er the west) a scene 
Of winter in his milder mood. Green fields, 
Which no kine cropped, lay damp ; and naked trees 
Threw skeleton shadows. Hedges, thickly grown, 
Twined into compact firmness, with no leaves, 



102 THE LUGGIE. 

Trembled in jewelled fretwork as the sun 
To lustre touched the tremulous waterdrops. 
Alone, nor whistling as his fellows do 
In fabling poem and provincial song, 
The ploughboy shouted to his reeking team ; 
And at the clamor, from a neighboring field 
Arose, with whirr of wings, a flock of rooks 
More clamorous ; and through the frosted air, 
Blown wildly here and there without a law, 
They flew, low-grumbling out loquacious croaks. 
Red sunset brightened all things ; streams ran red 
Yet coldly ; and before the unwholesome east, 
Searching the bones and breathing ice, blew down 
The hill, with a dry whistle, by the fire 
In chamber twilight rested I at home. 

But now what revelation of fair change, 
Giver of the seasons and the days ! 
Creator of all elements, pale mists, 
Invisible great winds and exact frost ! 



THE LUGGIE. 103 

How shall I speak the wonder of thy snow ? 

What though we know its essence and its birth, 

Can quick expound, in philosophic wise, 

The how, and whence, and manner of its fall ; 

Yet, oh, the inner beauty and the life — 

The life that is in snow ! The virgin-soft 

And utter purity of the down-flake, 

Falling upon its fellow with no sound ! 

Unblown by vulgar winds, innumerous flakes 

Fall gently, with the gentleness of love I 

Between its spotless-clothed banks, in clear 

Pellucid luculence, the Luggie seems 

Charmed in its course, and with deceptive calm 

Flows mazily in unapparent lapse, 

A liquid silence. Every field is robed, 

And in the furrow lies the plough unused. 

The earth is cherished, for beneath the soft 

Pure uniformity, is gently born 

Warmth and rich mildness, fitting the dead roots 

For the resuscitation of the spring. 



104 THE LUGGIE. 

Now while I write, the wonder clothes the vale, 
Calmed every wind and loaded every grove ; 
And looking through the implicated boughs 
I see a gleaming radiance. Sparkling snow, 
Refined by morning-footed frost so still, 
Mantles each bough ; and such a windless hush 
Breathes through the air, it seems the fairy glen 
About some phantom palace, pale abode 
Of fabled Sleeping Beauty. Songless birds 
Flit restlessly about the breathless wood, 
Waiting the sudden breaking of the charm ; 
And as they quickly spring on nimble wing 
From the white twig, a sparkling shower falls 
Starlike. It is not whiteness, but a clear 
Outshining of all purity, which takes 
The winking eyes with such a silvery gleam. 
No sunshine, and the sky is all one cloud. 
The vale seems lonely, ghostlike ; while aloud 
The housewife's voice is heard with doubled sound. 
I have not words to speak the perfect show ; 



THE LUGGIE. 105 

The ravishment of beauty ; the delight 

Of silent purity ; the sanctity 

Of inspiration which o'erflows the world, 

Making it breathless with divinity. 

God makes His angels spirits — that is, winds — 

His ministers a flaming fire. So, heart ! 

(Weak heai't that fainted in thy loneliness) 

In the sweet breezes spirits are alive ; 

God's angels guide the thunder-clouds ; and God 

Speaks in the thunder truly. All around 

Is loving and continuous deity ; 

His mercy over all His works remains. 

And surely in the glossy snow there shines 

Angelic influence, — a ministry 

Devout and heavenly, that with benign 

Action, amid a wondrous hush lets fall 

The dazzling garment on the fostered fields. 

So thus with fair delapsion softly falls 

The sacred shower ; and when the shortened day 

5* 



106 THE LUGGLE. 

Dejected dies in the low streaky west, 
The rimy moon displays a cold blue night, 
And keen as steel the east wind sprinkles ice. 
Thicker than bees, about the waxing moon 
Gather the punctual stars. Huge whitened hills 
Rise glimmering to the blue verge of the night, 
Ghostlike, and striped with narrow glens of firs 
Black-waving, solemn. O'er the Luggie stream 
Gathers a veiny film of ice, and creeps 
With elfin feet around each stone and reed, 
Working fine masonry ; while o'er the dam 
Dashing, a noise of waters fills the clear 
And nitrous air. All the dark wintry hours 
Sharply the winds from the white level moors 
Keen whistle. Timorous in homely bed 
The school-boy listens, fearful least gaunt wolves 
Or beasts, whose uncouth forms in ancient books 
He has beheld, at creaking shutters pull 
Howling. And when at last the languid dawn 
In windy redness re-illumes the east 



THE LUGGIE. 107 

With ineffectual fire, an intense blue 
Severely vivid o'er the snowy hills 
Gleams chill, while hazy half-transparent clouds 
Slow-range the freezing ether of the west. 
Along the woods the keenly vehement blasts 
Wail, and disrobe the mantled boughs, and fling 
A snow-dust everywhere. Thus wears the day : 
While grandfather over the well-watched fire 
Hangs cowering, with a cold drop at his nose. 

Now underneath the ice the Luggie growls, 
And to the polished smoothness curlers come 
Rudely ambitious. Then for happy hours 
The clinking stones are slid from wary hands, 
And Barleycorn, best wine for surly airs, 
Bites i' th' mouth, and ancient jokes are cracked. 
And oh, the journey homeward, when the sun, 
Low-rounding to the west, in ruddy glow 
Sinks large, and all the amber-skirted clouds, 
His flaming retinue, with dark'ning glow 



108 THE LUGGIE. 

Diverge ! The broom is brandished as the sign 

Of conquest, and impetuously they boast 

Of how this shot was played, — with what a bend 

Peculiar — the perfection of all art — 

That stone came rolling grandly to the Tee 

With victory crowned, and flinging wide the rest 

In lordly crash 1 Within the village inn, 

What time the stars are sown in ether keen, 

Clear and acute with brightness ; and the moon 

Sharpens her semicircle ; and the air 

With bleakly shivering sough cuts like a scythe, 

They by the roaring chimney sit, and quaff 

The beaded " Usqueba" with sugar dashed. 

0, when the precious liquid fires the brain 

To joy, and every heart beats fast with mirth 

And ancient fellowship, what nervy grasps 

Of horny hands o'er tables of rough oak ! 

What singing of Lang Syne till tear-drops shine, 

And friendships brighten as the evening wanes I 



THE LUGGIE. 109 

Now the dead earth, wrapt solemnly, expects 
The punctual resurrection of the Spring. 
Shackled and bound, the coldly vigilant frost 
Stiffens all rivers, and with eager power 
Hardens each glebe. The wasted country owns 
The keen despotic vehemence of the North ; 
And with the resignation that obtains 
Where he is weak and powerless, man awaits, 
Under God's mercy, the dissolvent thaw. 

All-beholding, All-informing God 
Invisible, and only through effects 
Known and beloved, unshackle the waste earth I 
Soul of the incomplete vitality 
In atom and in man ! Soul of all Worlds ! 
Leave not Thy glory vacant, nor afflict 
With fear and hunger, man whom Thou hast made. 
Thou from Thy chambers waterest the earth ; 
Thou givest snow like wool ; and scatterest wide 
Hoarfrost like ashes. Casting forth Thy ice 



110 THE LUGGIE. 

Like morsels, who can stand before Thy cold ? 
Thou sendest forth Thy word, and lo ! they melt ; 
Causing Thy wind to blow, the waters flow.* 

Soon the frozen air receives the subtle thaw : 
And suddenly a crawling mist, with rain 
Impregned, the damp day dims, and drizzling drops 
Proclaim a change. At night across the heavens 
Swift-journeying, and by a furious wind 
Squadroned, the hurrying clouds range the roused 

sky, 
Magnificently sombrous. The wan moon 
Amazed, gleams often through a cloudy rack, 
Then shuddering, hides. One earnest wakeful star 
Of living sapphire drooping by her side, 
A faithful spirit in her lone despair, 
Outshines the cloudy tempest. Then the shower 
Falls ceaseless, and night murmurs with the rain. 
And in the sounding morning what a change I 

* Psalm cxlvii. 16-18. 



THE LUGGIE. Ill 

The meadows shine new-washed ; while here and 

there 
A dusky patch of snow in sheltered paths 
Melts lonely. The awakened forest waves 
With boughs unplumed. The white investiture 
Of the fair earth hath vanished, and the hills 
That in the evening sunset glowed with rose 
And ineifectual baptism of gold, 
Shine tawdry, crawled upon by the blind rain. 
Now Luggie thunders down the ringing vale, 
Tawnily brown, wide-leaving yellow sand 
Upon the meadow. The Southwest, aroused, 
Blustering in moody kindness clears the sky 
To its blue depths by a full-winged wind, 
Blowing the diapason of red March. 

Blow high and cleanse the sky, Southwest wind ! 
Boll the full clouds obedient ; overthrow 
White crags of vapor in confusion piled 
Precipitate, high-toppling undissolved : 



112 THE LUGGIE. 

And while with silent workings they are spread 

And scattered, broken into ruinous pomp 

By Thy invisible influence, what calm 

And sweet disclosure of the upper deep 

Cerulean, the atmospheric sea ! 

Blow high and sift the earth, thou Southwest 

wind I 
Now the dull air grows rarer, and no more 
The stark day thickens towards evenfall ; 
Nor from the solid cloud-gloom drips the rain : 
But in a sunset mild and beautiful 
The day sinks, till in clear dilucid air, 
As in a chamber newly decorate, 
The golden Phoebe reddens with the wind. 
No more through hoary mists and low-hung clouds 
The eternal hills — bones of the earth — upheave 
Their deity for worship : but severe 
Against the clear sky outlined, each sharp crag 
Uplifts its scarred magnificence to Heaven. 
From breezy ledge the eagle springs aloft, 



THE LUGGIE. 113 

And beating boldly up against the wind, 
With inconceivable velocity 
Stretches to upper ether, and renews 
Haughty communion with the regal sun 1 
Blow high, deep-mouthed wind from the south- 
west ! 
And in the caves and hollows of the rocks 
Moan mournfully, for desolation reigns. 
Through the unknown abysses and foul chasms, 
Sacred to horror and eternal damps 
And darkness ever-cumbent, blindly howl 
Till the hoarse dragons, wailing in their woe 
Infernal, answer from accursed dens. 

Pleasant to him who long in sick-room pent, 

Surveying still the same unchanging hills 

Belted with vapor, muffled up in cloud ; 

The same raw landscape soaked in ceaseless rain ; 

Pleasant to him the invigorating wind. 

Roused from reclusive thought by the deep sound 



114 THE LUGGIE. 

And motion of the forest (as a steed 
When shrills the silver trumpet of the onset), 
He rushes to communion with old forms. 
Like a fair picture suddenly uncovered 
To an impatient artist, the fair earth, 
Touched with the primal glory of the Spring, 
Flings an indefinite glamour on his soul. 
With indistinct commotion he perceives 
All things, and his delight is indistinct. 
Earth's forms and ever-living beauty strike 
Amazement through his spirit, till he feels 
As one new-born to being undeflowered. 
The sudden music from the budding woods, 
The lark in air, startles and overjoys. 

Laverock ! (for thy Scottish name to me 
Sounds sweetest) with unutterable love 

1 love thee : for each morning, as I lie 
Relaxed and weary with my long disease, 
One from low grass arises visibly 

And sings as if it sang for me alone. 



THE LUGGIE. 115 

Among a thousand I could tell the tones 

Of this, my little sweet hierophant ! 

To fainting heart and the despairing soul 

What is more soothing than the natural voice 

Of birds ? One Candlemas many years ago, 

When weak with pain and sickness, it infused 

Into my soul a bliss delectable. 

For suddenly into the misty air 

A mellow, smooth, and liquid music, clear 

As silver, softer than an organ stop 

Ere the bass grumbles, rose. The blunted winds 

No longer edged severely with keen frost 

Forgot to whisper, and a summer-calm 

Pervaded soul and sense. No violet 

As yet breathed perfume ; from the darkling sward 

No snowdrop boldly peeped ; and even the ash, 

Whence flowed the sound, unfolded not her buds 

To blacken while the embryo gathered green. 

And yet this hardy herald of the Spring 

Chanted rich harmony, daintily carved out 



116 THE LUGGIE. 

Her voice, and through her sleek throat sobhed her 

soul 
In a delicious tremble. As she tuned 
Her pliant song, slow from the closing sky 
The sacred snow fell calm. Yet through the shower, 
Hushing all nature into silence, clear 
The Feltie-Jlier* trilled her slippery close 
In panting rapture, from the whitening ash. 
I stood all wonder ; and to this late hour 
Remember the dear song with ravishment ; 
Nor ever comes a merry Candlemas day 
But I am out to hear. And if perchance 
Some warbler sprinkle on the vacant air 
Its homeless notes, the bird seems to my heart 
The individual bird of comely gray 
That sang her pliant strain through falling snow. 

Now, when the crumbling glebe is by the wind 
Unbound, and snows adown the mountains hoar 

* I am almost certain this name of the bird is merely local, but I 
know no other. 



THE LUGGIE. 117 

Glide liquid, from the furrow loose the plough. 

Enyoke the willing horses, and upturn 

With deep-pressed share the saponaceous loam. 

From morn to even with progression slow 

The ploughboy cuts his awkward parallels, 

And soberly imbrowns the decent fields. 

It was a hazy February day 

Ten years ago, when I, a boy of ten, 

Beheld a country ploughing-match. The morn 

Lighted the east with a dim smoky flare 

Of leaden purple, as the rumbling wains 

Each with a plough light-laden (while behind 

Trotted a horse sleek-combed and tail bedight 

With many-colored ribbons) by our home 

Went downwards to the rich fat meadow-grounds 

Bounding the Luggie. Many a herd of beeves 

Dew-lapped had fattened there, and headlong oft 

O'er the hoof-clattering turf they wildly ran, 

Lashing with swinging tail the thirsty flies. 

But now the smooth expanse of level green 



118 THE LUGOIE. 

Was quickly to be changed to sober brown ; 

And twenty ploughs, by twenty ploughmen held, 

To cut with shining share the living turf. 

0, many a wintry hour, through wind and rain, 

In valleys gloomed, or by the bleak hillside 

Lonely, these twenty had themselves inured 

And stubborned to perfection. Many a touch 

And word of honest kindness had been used 

To the dear faithful horses snooving on 

In quiet patience, jutting noble chests. 

Now the big day, expected long, was come : 

And, with proud shoulders yoked, conscious they 

stood, 
Patient and unrefusing ; while behind, • 
All ready stripped, brown brawny arms displayed, — 
Arms sinewed by long labor, — eager swains, 
O'er-leaning slight, with cautious wary hold 
The plough detain. At the commencing sign 
A simultaneous noise discordant tears 
The air thick-closing to a hazy damp. 



THE LUGGIE. 119 

Sudden the horses move, and the clear yokes, 
Well-polished, clatter. With an artful bend 
The gleaming coulter takes the grass and cuts 
The greenly tedded blades with nibbling noise 
Almost unheard. The smooth share follows fast; 
And from its shining slope the clayey glebe 
In neat and neighboring furrows sidelong falls. 
Thus till the dank, raw-cold, and unpurged day 
Gathering its rheumy humors threatens rain ; 
And the bleak night steals up the forlorn east. 
And when the careful verdict is preferred 
By the wise judge (a gray-haired husbandman, 
Himself in his fresh youth a ploughboy keen), 
Some bosoms fire exultant. Others, slow 
Their reeking horses harnessed, lag along 
Heart-sad and weary ; and the rumbling noise 
Of homeward-going carts for miles away 
Is heard, till night brings silence and repose. 

But never with sad motions of the soul, 



120 THE LUGGIE. 

Despairing, yoked his sleek and smoking team 

For homeward journey my beloved friend ! 

He the great prize, the guinea all of gold, 

Gained thrice and grew a very famous man ; 

Till Death, the churl accursed, him in his prime 

Bore to the border-land of wonder. Then 

I felt the blank in life when dies a friend. 

Inexplicable emptiness and want 

Unsatisfied I The unrepealable law 

Consumed the living while the dead decayed. 

No more, no more through glorious nights of May 

We wander, chasing pleasure as of old. 

First night of May ! and the soft-silvered moon 

Brightens her semi-circle in the blue ; 

And 'mid the tawny orange of the west 

Shines the full star that ushers in the even 1 

On the low meadows by the Luggie-side 

Gathers a semi-lucent mist, and creeps 

In busy silence, shrouding golden furze 

And leavy copsewood. Through the tortuous dell 



THE LUGGIE. 121 

Like an eternal sound the Luggie flows 

In unreposing melody. And here, 

Three perfect summers gone, my dear first friend 

Was with me ; and we swore a sudden oath, 

To travel half a dozen miles and court 

Two sisters, whose sweet faces sunshine kissed 

To berry brown and country comeliness, — 

Kiss-worthier than the love of Solomon. 

So singing clearly with a merry heart 

Old songs — It was upon a Lammas nicht; 

And that sweet thing by gentle Tannahil, 

Married to music sweeter than itself, 

The Lowland Lassie — through dew-silvered fields 

We hastened 'mid the mist our footsteps raised 

Until we reached the moorland. From its bed 

Among the purplish heather whirring rose 

The plover, wildly screaming ; and from glens 

Of moaning firs the pheasant's piercing shriek 

Discordant sounded. Then, 'mong elder trees 

Throwing antique fat shadows, soon we saw 
6 



122 THE LUGGIE. 

The window panes, moon-whitened ; and low heard 

Bawtie, the shaggie collie, grumble out 

His disapproval in a sullen growl. 

But slyly wearing nearer, cried my friend, 

" Whisht, Bawtie ! Bawtie ! " and the fellow came 

Whining, and laid a wet nose in his palm 

Obedient, while I tinkled on the panes 

A fairy summons to the souls within. 

The door creaked musically, and a face 

Peeped smiling, till I whispered, " Open, Kate ! " 

And through the moonshine came the low sweet 

quest, — 
" Oh ! is it you ? " My answer was a kiss. 
Then entering the kitchen paved with stone, 
We kicked the sparkling fagot till it blazed ; 
And, sitting round it, many a tale of love 
Was told, until the chrysolite of dawn 
Burned in the east, and from the mountains rolled 
The sarcenent mists far-flaming with the morn. 
This was my first of May three years ago : 



THE LUG G IE. 123 

Now in a churchyard by the Bothlin side — 

The Auld Aisle — moulders my first friend, and 

keeps 
An early tryste with God, the All in All. 

We sat at school together on one seat, 

Came home together through the lanes, and knew 

The dunnock's nest together in the hedge, 

With smooth blue eggs in cosey brightness warm. 

And as two youngling kine on cold Spring nights 

Lie close together on the bleak hillside 

For mutual heat, so when a trouble came 

We crept to one another, growing still 

True friends in interchange of heart and soul. 

But suddenly death changed his countenance, 

And graved him in the darkness far from me. 

Friendship, prelibation of divine 

Enjoyment, union exquisite of soul, 

How many blessings do I owe to thee, 

How much of incommunicable woe ! 



124 THE LUGGIE. 

The daisies bloom among the tall green blades 
Upon his grave, and listening you may hear 
The Bothlin make sweet music as she flows ; 
And you may see the poplars by her brink 
Twinkle their silvery leaflets in the sun. 
little wandering preacher, Bothlin brook 1 
Wind musically by his lonely grave. 

well-known face, forever lost ! and voice, 
Forever silent ! I have heard thee sing 

In village inns what time the silver frost 
Curtained the panes in silent ministry, 
Sing old Scotch ballads full of love and woe, 
While the assimilative snow fell white and calm 
With ceaseless lapse. And I have seen thee dance 
Wild galliards with the buxom lasses, far 
In lone farm-houses set on whistling hills, 
While the storm thickened into thunder-cloud. 
Dear mentor in all rustic merriment, 
Ever as hearty as the night was long I 

1 miss thee often, as I do to-night, 



THE LUGGIE. 125 

And my heart fills ; and thy beloved songs 

The music and the words ring in my ears, 

Then Lowland lassie wilt thou go — until 

My eyes are full of tears, dear heart ! dear heart ! 

And I could pass the perilous edge of death 

To see thy dear, dear face, and hear again 

The old wild music as of old, of old. 

But as the Luggie with a plaintive song 

Twists through a glen of greenest gloom, and 

gropes 
For open sunshine ; and, the shadows past, 
Glides quicker-footed through divided meads 
With sliding purl, so from that tale of gloom 
My song with happier motions seeks the calm 
And quiet smoothness of a silver end. 
From orient valleys, where as lucent dew 
As ever jewelled Hermon falls and shines 
Fulfilled by sunrise ; where slant arrow-showers 
Of golden beams make every twinkling drop 



126 THE LUGGIE. 

■\ 

A diamond, and every blade of grass 
A glory ; — comes the earth-born wanderer, 
Sweet Lnggie, singing. Over the mill-dam 
Sounding, a cataract in miniature, 
White-robed it dashes through unceasing mist. 
Through ivied bridge, adown its rocky bed 
Shadowed by wavy limes whose branches bend 
Kissing the wave to ripples, on it purls 
Abrupt, capricious, past the hazel bower 
Where marriageable maid is being wooed ; 
And as on sward of velvet by her side 
Her lover low reclines, while his dear tongue 
Voices warm passion, — she confiding lays 
All her mild beauty in his manly breast 
Blushing. Ah, Luggie ! sure you murmur now 
Clearly and dearly o'er thy pumy stones ! 
And when amid a pause of thought they hear 
Thy babblement of music, never a shade 
Darkens their souls. Thy song is happiness, 
A revelation of sweet sympathies 



THE LUGGIE. 127 

By them interpreted ; for never yet 

Was Nature sullen when the spirit shone. 

This is in twilight, when that only star 

White Hesperus from chastest azure grows ; 

And as night trails her thousand shadows slow 

Over the spinning world, the streamlet sings 

Her mother earth asleep. Autumn nights ! 

When skies are deeply blue, and the full moon 

Soars in voluptuous whiteness, Juno-like, 

A passionate splendor ; when in the great south 

Orion like a frozen skeleton 

Hints of his ancient hugeness and mailed strength ; 

And Cassiopeia glimmers cold and clear 

Upon her throne of seven diamonds ! 

In the thick-foliaged bi'ake, the nightingale 

Of Scotland, chirping stonechacker, prolongs 

With whit, whit, chirr-r the day's full melody. 

Far-sounding through blue silence and smooth air, 

The drumming noise of the hoarse waterfall 

Is heard unheeded all by homely fires, 



128 THE LUGGIE. 

And heard unheeded all in hazel bower 
Where love wings hours of serene joy ; and still 
As roams with eerie wail the unbodied wind 
Through ghostly glen of pine, the maiden clings 
More closely, till two firm entwining arms 
Press comfort ; and there is a touch of lips. 

Now in this season — ere the flickering leaves 

Touched with October's fiery alchemy 

Grow sere and crisp — is shorn the meadow-hay. 

Mingled with spiral orchis, dim bluebell 

Of delicatest azure, crowfoot smooth, 

And ox-eye flaunting with faint flowers wild, 

Nameless to me — the fragrant rye-grass grew. 

Now with a measured sweep the keen-edged scythe 

Cuts all to wither in the imbrowning sun. 

Two golden days o'erpast (with eves of cloud 

Magnificently colored, heaped and strewn 

Confusedly) the country lasses come 

Bare-armed, bare-ancled ; and 'mid honest mirth 



THE LUGGIE. 129 

And homely jests with tinkling laughter winged, 

Gather the fading balm. With kindling eyes, 

And all the life of maidenhood aflame 

In little tremulous pants, — they carry light 

The warm load to the stack. 

0, many a time 

The old man, building slow the rising stack, 

Saw and reproved not our wild merriment : 

.Remembering, half-sad, his own fresh youth, 

When beauty was a magic to the soul 

And a fair face a charm ; when a lip-touch 

Was necromancy ; and the perfect life 

A wondrous yearning after womanhood. 

But at the breathless nerve-dissolving noon, 

When hot the undiminished sun downthrows 

Direct his beams, they from the field retire 

To cool consoling grove, or haply seek 

The drowsy pool, by beechen shadow chilled, 

To lave the limbs relaxed. With eager leap, 

Headlong they plunge from the enamelled bank 
6* i 



130 THE LUGGIE. 

Into the liquid cold, and slowly move 

With measured strokes and palms outspread ; while 

oft, 
When the clear water rises o'er the lip 
Dallying, they uptilt the swelling chest 
In unspent vigor. 

0, the pleasant time ! 
Pleasant beneath embowering trees, when day 
Hides with her silken mists the distant scene 
And breathes afar a nerve-dissolving steam, — 
Pleasant in sweet consolatory shade 
To wander pensive. Then the soul serenes 
The turbulent passions, and in devout trance, 
Unconscious of celestial power, reveals 
The God reflected in fair natural forms. 
For as the Sun disdains the vulgar gaze 
In his uplifted sphere, yet in the broad 
Gray Ocean shows a softer face, so God 
In nature shines. 0, sweet the bowery path 
Of fair Glenconner, where in volant youth 



THE LUGGIE. 131 

I saw the heroes of divine Romance. 

No pathway winding through fresh orange groves, 

Leading to white Campanian city, set 

Inviolably by the sapphire sea, 

Can fair Glenconner's umbrage-shadowed way 

Excel. The bird-embowering beechen boughs, 

Kissing each other, on the dusty way 

Throw trembling shadows ; and when warm west 

winds 
Roam hither in voluptuous unconcern, 
There is a music and a fragrancy 
Upon Glenconner, like the music hymned 
By choirs angelic on cerulean floors. 
Deem not I speak in vanity, or speak 
In false hyperbole, as poets do, 
When languaging in love the radiance 
Of maids ; but there is beauty and delight 
And passive feeling sweeter than all sense, 
To him who walks beneath the boughs, and hears 
The humming music like the sound of seas. 



132 THE LUGGIE. 

There have I dreamed for hours, — and gathered 

there 
The homely inspiration which fulfils 
The yearning of my soul. There have I felt 
The unconfined divinity which lies 
In beauty ; and when the eternal stars 
Have twinkled silver through illumined leaves, 
I could not choose but worship. 

fair eves 
Of undescribable sweetness long ago 1 
When gloaming caught me musing unawares, 
Musing alone beneath the whispering leaves 
That overshade Glenconner. Hour of calm 
Suggestive thought, when, like a robe, the earth 
Puts on a shadowy pensiveness, and stills 
The music of her motions multiform. 
Day lingered in the west ; and through a sky 
Of thinly-waning orange, sullen clouds 
Of amethyst, with flamy purple edged, 



THE LUGGIE. 133 

Moved evenly in sluggish pilotage. 

The windless shades of quiet eventide 

Slow gathered, and the sweet concordant tones 

Of melody within the leafy brake 

Died clearly, till the Mavis piped alone ; 

Then softly from the jasper sky, a star 

Drew radiant silver, brightening as the west 

Darkened. But ere the semicircled moon 

Shed her white light adown the lucent air, 

The Mavis ceased, and through the thin gloom 

brake 
The Corncraik's curious cry, the sylvan voice 
Of the shy bird that haunts the bladed corn ; 
And suddenly, yet silently, the blue 
Deepened, until innumerous white stars 
Through crystal smooth and yielding ether drooped, 
Not coldly, but in passionate June glow. 
The Corncraik now, 'mong tall green-bladed corn, 
Breasted her eggs with feathers dew-besprent, 
And stayed her human cry. The silence left 



134 THE LUGGIE. 

A gap within the soul, a sudden grief, 

An emptiness in the low-sighing air. 

Then swooning through full night, the summered 

earth 
Bosomed her children into tender rest ; 
Now delicately chambered ladies breathe 
Their souls asleep in white-limbed luxury. 
Virgins purest lipped ! with snowy lids 
Soft closed on living eyes ! unkissed cheeks, 
Half- sunk in pillowy pressure, and round arms 
In the sweet pettishness of silver dreams 
Flung warm into the cold unheeding air ! 
Sleep ! soft bedewer of infantine eyes, 
Pouter of rosy little lips ! plump hands 
Are doubled into deeply dimpled fists 
And stretched in rosy languor, curls are laid 
In fragrance on the rounded baby-face, 
Kiss-worthy darling ! Stiller of clear tongues 
And silvery laughter ! Now the musical noise 
Of little feet is silent, and blue shoes 



THE LUGGIE. 135 

No more come pattering from the nursery door. 
Death is not of thee, Sleep ! Thy calm domain 
Is tempered with a dreamy bliss, and dimmed 
With haunted glooms, and richly sanctified 
With the fine elements of Paradise. 
Burn in the gleaming sky, ye far-off Stars ! 
And thou, inoffensive Crescent ! lift 
The wonder of thy softness, the white shell 
Of thy clear beauty, till the wholesome dawn 
Wither thy brightness pale, and borrowed pride ! 

But sleep supine, on indolent afternoon 
Ere the winds wake, and holy mountain airs 
Descend, is sweet. 0, let the bard describe 
The sacred spot where, underneath the round 
Green odoriferous sycamore, he lay 
Sleepless, yet half asleep, in that one mood 
When the quick sense is duped, and angel wings 
Make spiritual music. Sweet and dim 
The sacred spot, beloved not alone 



136 THE LUGGIE. 

For its own beauty : but the memories, 
The pictures of the past which in the mind 
Arise in fair profusion, each distinct 
With the soft hue of some peculiar mood, 
Enchant to living lusti'e what before 
Was to the untaught vision simply fair. 
In a fair valley, carpeted with turf 
Elastic, sloping upwards from the stream, 
A rounded sycamore in honeyed leaves 
Most plenteous, murmurous with humming bees, 
Shadows a well. Darkly the crystal wave 
Gleams cold, secluded ; on its polished breast 
Imaging twining boughs. No pitcher breaks 
Its natural sleep, except at morn and eve 
When my good mother through the dewy grass 
Walks patient with her vessels, bringing home 
The clear refreshment. Every blowing Spring, 
A snowdrop with pure streaks of delicate green 
Upon its inmost leaves, from withered grass 
Springs whitely, and within its limpid breast 



THE LUGGIE. 137 

Is mirrored whitely. Not a finger plucks 

This hidden beauty ; but it blooms and dies, 

In lonely lustre blooms and lonely dies, — 

Unknown, unloved, save by one simple heart 

Poetic, the creator of this song. 

And after this frail luxury hath given 

Its little life in keeping to the soul 

Of all the worlds, a robin builds its nest 

In lowiy cleft, a foot or so above 

The water. His dried leaves, and moss, and grass 

He hither carries, lining all with hair 

For softness. I have laid the hand that writes 

These rhymes beloved, on the crimson breast, 

Sleek-soft, that panted o'er the five unborn ; 

While, leaf-hid, o'er me sang the watchful mate 

Plaintive, and with a sorrow in the song, 

In sylvan nook where anchoret might dwell 

Contented. Often on September days, 

When woods were efflorescent, and the fields 

Refulgent with the bounty of the corn, 



138 THE LUG GTE. 

And warming- sunshine filled the breathless air 
With a pale steam, — in heart-confused mood 
Have I worn holidays enraptured there ; 
For, dear God ! there is a pure delight 
In dreaming : in those mental-weary times, 
When the vext spirit finds a false content 
In fashioning delusions. 0, to lie 
Supinely stretched upon the shaded turf, 
Beholding through the opening of green leaves 
White clouds in silence navigating slow 
Cerulean seas illimitable 1 Hushed 
The drowsy noon, and, with a stilly sound 
Like harmony of thought, the Luggie frets, — 
Its bubbling mellowed to a musical hum 
By distance. Then the influences faint, 
Those visionary impulses that swell 
The soul to inspiration, crowding come 
Mysterious : and phantom memory 
(Ghost of dead feeling) haunts the undissolved, 
The unsubvertive temple of the soul I 



THE LUGGIE. 139 

But as through loamy meadows lipping slow 
Eats the fern-fringed Luggie ; and in spray 
Leaps the mill-dam, and o'er the rocky flats 
Spreads in black eddies ; so my first-born song 
Hastes to the end in heedless vagrancy. 
ravishingly sweet the clacking noise 
Of looms that murmur in our quiet dell ! 
No fairer valley Dyer ever dreamed, — 
Dyer, best river-singer, bard among 
Ten thousand. Reader, hasten ye and come, 
And see the Luggie wind her liquid stream 
Through copsy villages and spiry towns ; 
And see the Bothlin trotting swift of foot 
From glades of alder, eager to combine 
Her dimpling harmony with Luggie's calm, 
Clear music, like the music of the soul. 
But where you see the meeting, reader, stay, 
stay and hear the music of the looms. 
Through homely rustic bridge with ivy shagged, 
(Which you shall see if ever you do come 



140 THE LUGGIE. 

A summer pilgrim to our valley fair,) 
The Luggie flows with bells of foam-like stars 
About its surface. A smooth bleaching-green 
Spi*eads its soft carpet to the open doors 
Of simple houses, shining-white. Blue smoke 
Curls through the breathing air to the tree-tops 
Thin spreading, and is lost. A humming noise 
Industrious is heard, the clack of looms, 
Whereon sit maidens, homely fair, and full 
Of household simpleness, who sing and weave, 
And sing and weave through all the easy hours, 
Each day to-morrow's counterpart, and smooth 
Memory the mirror wherein golden Hope, 
Contented, sees herself. Here dwell an old 
Couple whose lives have known twice forty years 
(My mother's parents), their sage spirits touched 
With blest anticipation of a home 
Celestial bright, wherein they may fulfil 
The life which death discovers. Last winter night 
I, an accustomed visitant, beheld 



THE LUGGIE. 141 

The dear old pair. He in an easy-chair 

Lay dozing, while beside her noiseless wheel 

She sat, her brow into her lap declined, 

And half asleep ! Sure sign, my mother said, 

Of the conclusion of mortality. 

A boy of ten, their grandson, on the floor 

Lay stretched in early slumber ; all the three 

Unconscious of my entrance. A strange sight, 

Fraught with strange lessons for the human soul. 

In the first portion of her married life, 

This woman, now, alas ! so weary, old, 

Bore daughters five ; of well-beloved sons 

An equal number. Some of them died young, 

But six are yet alive, and dwelling all 

Within a mile of her own house. The flower, 

The idol of the mother, and her pride, 

Dear magnet of all hopes, embodiment 

Of heavenly blessings, was the youngest son, 

Youngest of all. Me often has she told 

How not a man could fling the stone with him ; 



142 THE LUGGIE. 

That in his shoes he outran racers fleet 

Barefooted ; dancing" on the shaven green 

On summer holidays and autumn eves 

(As to this day they do) his laugh was clearest, 

Lightest his step ; and he could thrill the hearts 

Of simple women by a natural grace, 

And perilous recital of love-tales. 

I cannot tell by what mysterious means, 

Day-dream, or silver vision of the night, 

Or sacred show of reason, picturing 

A smooth ambition and calm happiness 

For years of weaker age, — but suddenly 

In prime of life there flowered in his soul 

An inextinguishable love to be 

A minister of God. When holy schemes 

Govern the motions of the spirit, ways 

Are found to compass them. With wary care, 

Frugality praiseworthy, and the strength 

Of two strong arms, he in the summer months 

Hoarded a competence equivalent 



THE LUGGIE. 143 

To all demands, until the sessions end. 

Whate'er by manual labor be bad gained 

Through tbe clear summer months in verdant fields, 

With brooks of silver laced, and cooled with winds, 

Was spent in winter in the smoky town. 

But when his annual course of study past 

He with his presence blessed his father's house, 

With what a sacred sanctity of hope 

Eager his mother dreamed, or garrulous 

Spake of him everywhere, — his foreign ways, 

And midnight porings o'er uncanny books. 

His father, with a stern delight suffused, 

Grew a proud man of some importance now 

In his own eyes ; for who in all the vale 

Had e'er a son so noble and so learned, 

So worthy as his own ? 

So time wore on : but when three years complete 

Had perfected their separate destinies, 

A change stole o'er the current of their lives, 

As a cloud-shadow glooms the crystal stream. 



144 THE LUGGIE. 

Their son came home, but with his coming came 

Sorrow. A hue too beautifully fair 

Brightened his cheek, as sunlight tints a cloud. 

His face had caught a trick of joy more sad 

Than visible grief ; and all the subtle frame 

Of human life, so wonderfully wrought, 

A mystery of mechanism, was wearing 

In sore uneasy manner to the grave. 

What need to tell what every heart must know 

In sympathy prophetical ? Long time, 

A varied year in seasons four complete 

(For the white snow-drop o'er my mother's well 

Twice oped its whitest leaves among the green) 

He lay consuming. It must needs have been 

A weary trial to the thinking soul, 

Thus with a consciousness of coming death, 

The grim Attenuation ! evermore 

Nearing insatiate. At her spinning-wheel 

His mother sat ; and when his voice grew faint, 

A simple whistle by his pillow lay, 



THE LUGGIE. 145 

And at its sound she entered patient, sad, 
Her soothing love to minister, her hope 
To nourish to its fading. But his breath 
Grew weaker ever ; and his dry, pale lips 
Closing upon the little instrument, 
Could not produce a faintly audible note ! 
A little bell, the plaything of a child, 
Now at his bedside hung, and its clear tones 
Tinkled the weary summons. Thus his time 
Narrowed to a completion, and his soul, 
Immortal in its nature, through his eyes 
Yearning, beheld the majesty of Him 
Great in His mystery of godliness, 
Fulfiller of the dim Apocalypse I 

Twelve years have past since then, and he is 

now 

A happy memory in the hearts of those 

Who knew him ; for to know him was to love. 

And oft I deem it better, as the fates, 

7 j 



146 THE LUGGIE. 

Or God, whose will is fate, have proven it ; 
For had he lived and fallen (as who of us 
Doth perfectly ? and let him that is proud 
Take heed lest he do fall) he would have been 
A sadness to them in their aged hours. 
But now he is an honor and delight, 
A treasure of the memory, a joy 
Unutterable ; by the lone fireside 
They never tire to speak his praise, and say 
How, if he had been spared, he would have been 
So great, and good, and noble as (they say) 
The country knows ; although I know full well 
That not a man in all the parish round 
Speaks of him ever : he is now forgot, 
And this his natal valley knows him not. — 
And this his natal valley knows him not ? 
The well beloved, nothing ? — the fair face 
And pliant limbs, poor indistinctive dust ? 
The body, blood, and network of the brain 
Crumbled as a clod crumbles ! Is this all ? 



THE LUGGIE. 147 

A turf, a date, an epitaph, and then 

Oblivion, and profound nonentity ! 

And thus his natal valley knows him not. 

Trees murmur to the passing wind, streams flow, 

Flowers shine with dew-drops in the shady glens, 

All unintelligent creation smiles 

In loving-kindness ; but, like a light dream 

Of morning, man arises in fair show, 

Like the hued rainbow from incumbent gloom 

Elicited, he shines against the sun, — 

A momentary glory. Not a voice 

Remains to whisper of his whereabouts : 

The palpable body in its mother's breast 

Dissolves, and every feature of the face 

Is lost in feculent changes. black earth ! 

Wrap from bare eyes the slow decaying form, 

The beauty rotting from the living hair, 

The body made incapable through sin 

God's Spirit to contain. Earth, wrap it close 

Till the heavens vibrate to the trump of doom 1 



148 THE LUGGIE. 

This is not all : for the invisible soul 

Betrays the soft desire, the quenchless wish, 

To live a purer life, more proximate 

To the prime Fountain of all life. The power 

Of vivid fancy and the boundless scenes 

(High colored with the coloring' of Heaven), 

Creations of imagination, tell 

The mortal yearnings of immortal souls ! 

Now, while around me in blind labor, winds 

Howl, and the rain-drops lash the streaming pane ; 

Now, while the pine-glen on the mountain-side 

Roars in its wrestling with the sightless foe, 

And the black tarn grows hoary with the storm ; — 

Amid the external elemental war, 

My soul with calm comportment — more becalmed 

By the wild tempest furious without — 

Sits in her sacred cell, and ruminates 

On Death, severe discloser of new life. 

When the well-known and once embraceable form 

Is but a handful of white dust, the soul 



THE LUGGIE. 149 

Grows in divine dilation, nearer God. 
Therefore grieve not, my heart, that unsustained 
His memory died among us, that no more, 
While yet the grass is hoary and the dawn 
Lingers, he shyly through untrodden fields 
Brushes his early path : that he no more 
Beneath the beech, in lassitude outstretched, 
Ponders the holy strains of Israel's King ; 
For in translated glory, and new clothed 
With Incorruptible, he purer air 
Breathes in a fairer valley. There no storm 
Maddens as now ; no flux, and no opaque, 
But all is calm, and permanent, and clear, — 
God's glory and the Lamb illumine all 1 

Now ends this song, — not for self-honor sung, 
But in the Luggie's service. It hath been 
A crowned vision and a silver dream, 
That I should touch this valley with renown 
Eternal, make the fretting waters gleam 



100 THE LUGGIE. 

In light above the common light of earth. 
The shoreless air of heaven is purer here, 
The golden beams more keenly crystalline, 
The skies more deeply sapphired. For to me 
About these emerald fields and lawny hills 
There linger glories which you cannot see, 
And influences which you cannot feel, 
Delight and incommunicable woe ! 
My home is here ; and like a patient star, 
Shining between untroubled Paradise 
And my own soul, a mother shines therein, 
The sole perfection of true womanhood : 
A father — with the wisdom which pertains 
To gray experience, and that stern delight 
In naked truth, and reason which belongs 
To the intense reflective mind — hath told 
His fifty winters here. And all the hopes 
Which gild the present ; all the sad regrets 
"Which dull the past, are present to my soul 
In the external forms and colorings 



THE LUGGIE. 151 

Of this dear valley. Therefore do I yearn 
To make its stream flow in undying verse, 
Low-singing through the labyrinthine dell ! 

And let forgiving charity preclude 

Harsh judgments from the singer : not that he 

Fearfully would forestall the righteous word, 

Blameworthy, spoken in kindness, and that truth 

Which sanctions condemnation. Yet, dear Lord, 

A youthful flattering of the spirit, touched 

With a desire unquenchable, displays 

My hope's delirium. 0, if the dream 

Fade into nothing, into worse than naught, 

Blackness of darkness like the golden zones 

Of an autumnal sunset, and the night 

Of unfulfilled ambition closes round 

My destiny, think what an awful hell 

O'erwhelms the conquered soul ! Therefore, men 

Who guard with jealousy and loving care 

The honor of our sacred literature, 



152 



THE LUGGIE. 



Read with a kindness born of trustful hope, 
Forgiving rambling school-boy thoughts, too plain 
To utter with a spasm, or clothe in cold 
Mosaic fretwork of well-pleasing words, 
Forgiving youth's vagaries, want of skill, 
And blind devotional passion for my home I 




IN THE SHADOWS. 



A POEM IN SONNETS. 



-<S)0<2> 



7* 



INDUCTION. 




|® NTER sabred mortal ! and in awe behold 



The chancel of a dying poet's mind, 
Hung round, ah ! not adorned, with pictures bold 
And quaint, but roughly touched for the refined. 
The chancel, not the charnel-house ! For I 
To God have raised a shrine immaculate 
Therein, whereon His name to glorify, 
And daily mercies meekly celebrate. 
So in, scared breather ! here no hint of death, — 
Skull or cross-bones suggesting sceptic fear ; 
Yea, rather calmer beauty, purer breath 
Inhaled from a diviner atmosphere. 



156 IN THE SHADOWS. 



TF it must be ; if it must be, God ! 

That I die young, and make no further moans ; 
That, underneath the unrespective sod, 

In unescutcheoned privacy, my bones 
Shall crumble soon, — then give me strength to bear 

The last convulsive throe of too sweet breath I 
I tremble from the edge of life, to dare 

The dark and fatal leap, having no faith, 
No glorious yearning for the Apocalypse ; 

But like a child that in the night-time cries 
For light, I cry ; forgetting the eclipse 

Of knowledge and our human destinies. 
peevish and uncertain soul ! obey 
The law of life in patience till the Day. 



IN THE SHADOWS. 157 



II. 

" "\ 1 7H0M the gods love die young." The thought 
is old ; 

And yet it soothed the sweet Athenian mind. 
I take it with all pleasure, overbold, 

Perhaps, yet to its virtue much inclined 
By an inherent love for what is fair. 

This is the utter poetry of woe, — 
That the bright-flashing gods should cure despair 

By love, and make youth precious here below. 
I die, being young ; and, dying, could become 

A pagan, with the tender Grecian trust. 
Let death, the fell anatomy, benumb 

The hand that writes, and fill my mouth with 
dust, — 
Chant no funereal theme, but, with a choral 
Hymn, ye mourners ! hail immortal youth au- 
roral ! 



158 IN THE SHADOWS. 



m. 

"\ ~\ 7"ITH the tear-worthy four, consumption killed 
In youthful prime, before the nebulous mind 
Had its symmetric shapeliness defined, 

Had its transcendent destiny fulfilled. — 
May future ages grant me gracious room, 

With Pollok, in the voiceless solitude 

Finding his holiest rapture, happiest mood ; 

Poor White forever poring o'er the tomb ; 
With Keats, whose lucid fancy mounting far 

Saw heaven as an intenser, a more keen 

Redintegration of the Beauty seen 

And felt by all the breathers on this star ; 

With gentle Bruce, flinging melodious blame 

On the Future for an uncompleted name. 



IN THE SHADOWS. 159 

IV. 

f~\ MANY a time with Ovid have I borne 
My father's vain, yet well-meant reprimand, 
To leave the sweet-aired, clover-purpled land 

Of rhyme, — its Lares loftily forlorn, 

With all their pure humanities unworn, — 
To batten on the bare Theologies I 
To quench a glory lighted at the skies, 

Fed on one essence with the silver morn, 
Were of all blasphemies the most insane. 

So deeplier given to the delicious spell 
I clung to thee, heart-soothing Poesy ! 

Now on a sick-bed racked with arrowy pain 
I lift white hands of gratitude, and cry, 

Spirit of God in Milton ! was it well ? 



160 IN THE SHADOWS. 



V. 

AST night, on coughing slightly with sharp 
pain, 

There came arterial blood, and with a sigh 
Of absolute grief I cried in bitter vein, 

That drop is my death-warrant : I must die. 
Poor meagre life is mine, meagre and poor ! 

Eather a piece of childhood thrown away ; 
An adumbration faint ; the overture 

To stifled music ; year that ends in May ; 
The sweet beginning of a tale unknown ; 

A dream unspoken ; promise unfulfilled ; 
A morning with no noon, a rose unblown, — 

All its deep rich vermilion crushed and killed 
I' th' bud by frost : — Thus in false fear I cried, 
Forgetting that to abolish death Christ died. 



IN THE SHADOWS. 161 



VL 



C WEETLY, my mother ! Go not yet away, — 

I have not told my story. 0, not yet, 
With the fair past before me, can I lay 

My cheek upon the pillow to forget. 
sweet, fair past, my twenty years of youth 

Thus thrown away, not fashioning a man ; 
But fashioning a memory, forsooth ! 

More feminine than follower of Pan. 
God 1 let me not die for years and more ! 

Fulfil Thyself, and I will live then surely 
Longer than a mere childhood. Now heartsore, 

Weary, with being weary, — weary, purely. 
In dying, mother, I can find no pleasure 
Except in being near thee without measure. 



162 IN THE SHADOWS. 



TT E W Atlas for my monument ; upraise 
A pyramid for my tomb, that, undestroyed 
By rank, oblivion, and the hungry void, 

My name shall echo through prospective days. 
careless conqueror ! cold, abysmal grave ! 

Is it not sad — is it not sad, my heart — 

To smother young ambition, and depart 

Unhonored and unwilling, like death's slave ? 

No rare immortal remnant of my thought 
Embalms my life ; no poem, firmly reared 
Against the shock of time, ignobly feared, — 

But all my life's progression come to nought. 
Hew Atlas ! build a pyramid in a plain ! 
0, cool the fever burning in my brain ! 



IN THE SHADOWS. 163 



vni. 



T^ROM this entangling labyrinthine maze 
Of doctrine, creed, and theory ; from vague, 
Vain speculations : the detested plague 
Of spiritual pride, and vile affrays 

Sectarian, good Lord, deliver me ! 
Nature ! thy placid monitory glory 
Shines uninterrogated, while the story 
Goes round of this and that theology, 

This creed, and that, till patience close the list. 
Once more on Carronben's wind-shrilling height 
To sit in sovereign solitude, and quite 

Forget the hollow world, — a pantheist 
Beyond Bonaventura ! This were cheer 
Passing the tedious tale of shallow pulpiteer. 



164 IN THE SHADOWS. 



IX. 

A VALE of tears, a wilderness of woe, 

A sad unmeaning mystery of strife ; 
Reason with Passion strives, and Feeling ever 
Battles with Conscience, clear-eyed arbiter. 

Thus spake I in sad mood not long ago, 
To my dear father, of this human life, 

Its jars and fantasies. Soft answered he, 
With soul of love strong as a mountain river : 

We make ourselves. Son, you are what you are 
Neither by fate nor providence nor cause 

External : all unformed humanity 
Waiteth the stamp of individual laws ; 

And as you love and act, the plastic spirit 

Doth the impression evermore inherit. 



IN THE SHADOWS. 165 



AST Autumn we were four, and travelled far 

"With Phoebe in her golden plenilune, 

O'er stubble-fields where sheaves of harvest boon 
Stood slanted. Many a clear and steadfast star 

Twinkled its radiance through crisp-leaved beeches, 
Over the farm to which, with snatches rare 

Of ancient ballads, songs, and saucy speeches, 
He hurried, happy mad. Then each had there 

A dove-eyed sister pining for him, four 
Fair ladies legacied with loveliness, 

Chaste as a group of stars, or lilies blown 
In rural nunnery. God ! Thy sore, 

Strange ways expound. Two to the grave have 
gone 
Without apparent reason more or less. 



166 IN THE SHADOWS. 



XL 



TVT W, while the long-delaying ash assumes 

The delicate April green, and, loud and clear, 
Through the cool, yellow, mellow twilight glooms, 

The thrush's song enchants the captive ear ; 
Now, while a shower is pleasant in the falling, 

Stirring the still perfume that wakes around ; 
Now, that doves mourn, and from the distance 
calling, 

The cuckoo answers, with a sovereign sound, — 
Come, with thy native heart, true and tried I 

But leave all books ; for what with converse high, 
Flavored with Attic wit, the time shall glide 

On smoothly, as a river floweth by, 
Or as on stately pinion, through the gray 
Evening, the culver cuts his liquid way. 



IN THE SHADOWS. 167 



xn. 

"\ ~X TJ3.Y are all fair things at their death the fairest? 

Beauty the beautifullest in decay ? 

Why doth rich sunset clothe each closing day 
With ever-new apparelling the rarest ? 

Why are the sweetest melodies all born 
Of pain and sorrow ? Mourneth not the dove 
In the green forest gloom, an absent love ? 

Leaning her breast against that cruel thorn, 
Doth not the nightingale, poor bird, complain 

And integrate her uncontrollable woe 
To such perfection, that to hear is pain ? 

Thus, Sorrow and Death — alone realities — 
Sweeten their ministration, and bestow 

On troublous life a relish of the skies ! 



168 IN THE SHADOWS. 



xin. 



A ND well-beloved, is this all, this all ? 

Gone, like a vapor which the potent morn 
Kills, and in killing- glorifies ! I call 

Through the lone night for thee, my dear first- 
born 
Soul-fellow ! but my heart vibrates in vain. 

Ah ! well I know, and often fancy forms 
The weather-blown churchyard where thou art 
lain, — 

The churchyard whistling to the frequent storms. 
But down the valley, by the river side, 

Huge walnut-trees — bronze-foliaged, motionless 
As leaves of metal — in their shadows hide 

Warm nests, low music, and true tenderness. 
But thou, betrothed ! art far from me, from me. 
heart I be merciful — I loved him utterly. 



IN THE SHADOWS. 169 



XIV. 

T^ATHER ! when I have passed, with ' deathly- 
swoon, 
Into the ghost-world, immaterial, dim, 
may nor time nor circumstance dislimn 

My image from thy memory, as noon 

Steals from the fainting bloom the cooling dew ! 
Like flower, itself completing bud and bell, 

In lonely thicket, be thy sorrow true, 

And in expression secret. Worse than hell 

To see the grave hypocrisy, — to hear 
The crocodilian sighs of summer friends 
Outraging griefs assuasive, holy ends ! 

But thou art faithful, father, and sincere ; 
And in thy brain the love of me shall dwell 
Like the memorial music in the curved sea-shell. 



170 IN THE SHADOWS. 



XV. 

T7ROM my sick-bed gazing upon the west, 
Where all the bright eifulgencies of day 
Lay steeped in sunless vapors, raw and gray, — 

Herein (methought) is mournfully exprest 
The end of false ambitions, sullen doom 

Of my brave hopes, Promethean desires : 

Barren and perfumeless, my name expires 
Like summer-day setting in joyless gloom. 

Yet faint I not in sceptical dismay, 

Upheld by the belief that all pure thought 

Is deathless, perfect : that the truths outwrought 

By the laborious mind cannot decay, 

Being evolutions of that Sovereign Mind 

Akin to man's ; yet orbed, exhaustless, undefined. 



IN THE SHADOWS. 171 



XVI. 



r ~PHE daisy-flower is to the summer sweet, 

Though utterly unknown it live and die ; 
The spheral harmony were incomplete 

Did the dewed laverock mount no more the sky, 

Because her music's linked sorcery 
Bewitched no mortal heart to heavenly mood. 

This is the law of nature, that the deed 
Should dedicate its excellence to God, 

And in so doing find sufficient meed. 
Then why should I make these heart-burning cries 

In sickly rhyme with morbid feeling rife, 
For fame and temporal felicities ? 
Forgetting that in holy labor lies 

The scholarship severe of human life. 



172 IN THE SHADOWS. 



xvn. 

f~\ GOD, it is a terrible thing to die 

Into the inextinguishable life ; 
To leave this known world with a feeble cry, 

All its poor jarring and ignoble strife. 
that some shadowy spectre would disclose 

The Future, and the soul's confineless hunger 
Satisfy with some knowledge of repose ! 

For here the lusts of avarice waxeth stronger, 
Making life hateful ; youth alone is true, 

Full of a glorious self-forgetfulness : 
Better to die inhabiting the new 

Kingdom of faith and promise, and confess, 
Even in the agony and last eclipse, 
Some revelation of the Apocalypse ! 



IN THE SHADOWS. 173 



xvni. 

"\ ~X 71SE in his day that heathen emperor, 

To whom, each morrow, came a slave, and cried, 
" Philip, remember thou must die" : no more. 

To me such daily voice were misapplied, — 
Disease guests with me ; and each cough, or cramp, 

Or aching, like the Macedonian slave, 
Is my memento mori. 'T is the stamp 

Of God's true life to be in dying brave. 
"I fear not death, but dying," * — not the long 

Hereafter, sweetened by immortal love ; 
But the quick, terrible last breath, — the strong 

Convulsion. 0, my Lord of breath above 1 
Grant me a quiet end, in easeful rest, — 
A sweet removal, on my mother's breast. 

* This is a saying of Socrates. 



174 IN THE SHADOWS. 



XIX. 

/^CTOBER'S gold is dim, — the forests rot, 
The weary rain falls ceaseless, while the day- 
Is wrapped in damp. In mire of village way 

The hedge-row leaves are stamped, and, all forgot, 

The broodless nest sits visible in the thorn. 
Autumn, among her drooping marigolds, 
Weeps all her garnered sheaves, and empty folds, 

And dripping orchards, — plundered and forlorn. 

The season is a dead one, and I die ! 

No more, no more for me the spring shall make 
A resurrection in the earth, and take 

The death from out her heart — God, I die ! 

The cold throat-mist creeps nearer, till I breathe 

Corruption. Drop, stark night, upon my death ! 



IN THE SHADOWS. 175 



XX. 

T^\IE down, dismal day ! and let me live. 

And come, blue deeps ! magnificently strewn 
With colored clouds — large, light, and fugitive — 

By upper winds through pompous motions blown. 
Now it is death in life, — a vapor dense 

Creeps round my window till I cannot see 
The far snow-shining mountains, and the glens 

Shagging the mountain-tops. God ! make free 
This barren, shackled earth, so deadly cold, — 

Breathe gently forth Thy spring, till winter flies 
In rude amazement, fearful and yet bold, 

While she performs her customed charities. 
I weigh the loaded hours till life is bare — 
God I for one clear day, a snowdrop, and sweet 
air! 



176 IN THE SHADOWS. 



XXL 

COMETIMES, when sunshine and blue sky pre- 
vail, — 

When spent winds sleep, and, from the budding 
larch, 
Small birds, with incomplete, vague sweetness, hail 

The unconfirmed yet quickening life of March, — 
Then say I to myself, half-eased of care, 

Toying with hope as with a maiden's token, — 
"This glorious, invisible fresh air 

Will clear my blood till the disease be broken." 
But slowly, from the wild and infinite west, 

Up-sails a cloud, full-charged with bitter sleet. 
The omen gives my spirit much unrest ; 

I fling aside the hope, as indiscreet, — 
A false enchantment, treacherous and fair, — 
And sink into my habit of despair. 



IN THE SHADOWS. 177 



XXII. 

f~\ WINTER ! wilt thou never, never go ? 

Summer ! but I weary for thy coming ; 
Longing once more to hear the Luggie flow, 

And frugal bees laboriously humming. 
Now, the east wind diseases the infirm, 

And I must crouch in corners from rough weather. 
Sometimes a winter sunset is a charm, — 

When the fired clouds, compacted, blaze together, 
And the large sun dips, red, behind the hills. 

I, from my window, can behold this pleasure ; 
And the eternal moon, what time she fills 

Her orb with argent, treading a soft measure, 
With queenly motion of a bridal mood, 
Through the white spaces of infinitude. 



8* 



178 IN THE SHADOWS. 



XXTTT. 



r\ BEAUTIFUL moon ! beautiful moon 1 again 

Thou persecutest me until I bend 
My brow, and soothe the aching of my brain. 

I cannot see what handmaidens attend 
Thy silver passage as the heaven clears ; 

For, like a slender mist, a sweet vexation 
Works in my heart, till the impulsive tears 

Confess the bitter pain of adoration. 
0, too, too beautiful moon I lift the white shell 

Of thy soft splendor through the shining air ! 
I own the magic power, the witching spell, 

And, blinded by thy beauty, call thee fair ! 
Alas ! not often now thy silver horn 
Shall me delight with dreams and mystic love 
forlorn ! 



IN THE SHADOWS. 179 



XXIV. 

"~P IS April, yet the wind retains its tooth. 

I cannot venture in the biting air, 
But sit and feign wild trash and dreams uncouth, 

" Stretched on the rack of a too-easy chair." 
And when the day has howled itself to sleep, 

The lamp is lighted in my little room ; 
And lowly, as the tender lapwings creep, 

Comes my own mother, with her love's perfume. 
living sons with living mothers ! learn 

Their worth, and use them gently, with no 
chiding ; 
For youth, I know, is quick ; of temper stern 

Sometimes ; and apt to blunder without guiding. 
So was I long, but now I see her move, 
Transfigured in the radiant mist of love. 



180 IN THE SHADOWS. 



XXV. 



YING- awake at holy eventide, 
While in clear mournfulness the throstle's hymn 
Hushes the night, and the great west grown dim 

Laments the sunset's evanescent pride : 

Lo ! I behold an orb of silver brightly 

Grow from the fringe of sunset, like a dream 

From Thought's severe infinitude, and nightly 
Show forth God's glory in its sacred gleam. 

Ah, Hesper ! maidenliest star that ere 

Twinkled in firmament ! cool gloaming's prime 
Cheerer, whose fairness maketh wondrous fair 
Old pastorals, and the Spenserian rhyme : — 

Thy soft seduction doth my soul enthral 

Like music, with a dying, dying fall ! 



IN THE SHADOWS. 181 



XXVI. 



'T'HERE are three bornrie Scottish melodies, 
So native to the music of my soul, 

That of its humors they seem prophecies. 
The ravishment of Chaucer was less whole, 

Less perfect, when the April nightingale 
Let itself in upon him. Surely, Lord I 
Before whom psaltery and clarichord, 

Concentual with saintly song, prevail, 
There lurks some subtle sorcery, to Thee 

And heaven akin, in each woe-burning air ! 
Land of the Leal, and Bonnie Bessie Lee, 

And Home sweet Home, the lilt of love's despair. 
Now, in remembrance even, the feelings speak, 
For lo ! a shower of grace is on my cheek. 



182 IN THE SHADOWS. 



XX VII. 

" Thou art wearin' awa', Jean, 
Like snaw when it 's thaw, Jean } 
Thou art wearin' awa' 
To the land o' the leal." — Old Song. 

f~\ THE impassable sorrow, mother mine ! 

Of the sweet, mournful air which, clear and well, 
For me thou singest ! Never the divine 

Mahometan harper, famous Israfel, 
Such rich enchanting luxury of woe 

Elicited from all his golden strings ! 
Therefore, dear singer sad ! chant clear, and low, 

And lovingly, the bard's imaginings. 
poet unknown ! conning thy verses o'er 

In lone, dim places, sorrowfully sweet ; 
And musician ! touching the quick core 

Of pity, when thy skilful closes meet, — 
My tears confess your witchery as they flow, 
Since I, too, wear away like the unenduring snow. 



IN THE SHADOWS. 183 



XXVHI. 

TPLIFT in unparticipated night 

indefinable Being ! far retired 
From mortal ken in uncreated light : 

While demonstrating glories unacquired 
When shall the wavering sciences evolve 

The infinite secret, Thee ? What mind shall scan 
The tenor of Thy workmanship, or solve 

The dark, perplexing destiny of man ? 
0, in the hereafter boarder-land of wonder, 

Shall the proud world's inveterate tale be told, 
The curtain of all mysteries torn asunder, 

The cerements from the living soul unrolled ? 
Impatient questioner, soon, soon shall death 
Reveal to thee these dim phantasmata of faith. 



184 IN THE SHADOWS. 



XXIX. 

A ND thus proceeds the mode of human life 

From mystery to mystery again ; 
From God to God, through grandeur, grief, and strife, 

A hurried plunge into the dark inane 
Whence had we lately sprung. And is 't forever ? 

Ah ! sense is blind beyond the gaping clay, 
And all the eyes of faith can see it never. 

We know the bright-haired sun will bring the 
day, 
Like glorious book of silent prophecy ; 

Majestic night assume her starry throne ; 
The wondrous seasons come and go : but we 

Die, and to mortal ken forever gone. 
Who shall pry further ? who shall kindle light 
In the dread bosom of the infinite ? 



IN THE SHADOWS. 185 



XXX. 



f~\ THOU of purer eyes than to behold 
Uncleanness ! sift my soul, removing all 
Strange thoughts, imaginings fantastical, 

Iniquitous allurements manifold. 

Make it a spiritual ark ; abode 

Severely sacred, perfumed, sanctified, 
Wherein the Prince of Purities may abide, — 

The holy and eternal Spirit of God. 

The gross, adhesive loathsomeness of sin, 

Give me to see. Yet, far more, far more, 

That beautiful purity which the saints adore 
In a consummate Paradise within 

The Veil, — Lord, upon my soul bestow, 

An earnest of that purity here below. 



186 IN THE SHADOWS. 



MY EPITAPH. 

pyEL W lies one whose name was traced in sand. 

He died, not knowing vjhat it was to live : 

Died, while the first sweet consciousness of manhood 

To maiden thought electrified his soul, 

Faint heatings in the calyx of the rose. 

Bewildered reader ! pass without a sigh, 

In a proud sorrow ! There is life with God 

In other kingdom of a sweeter air. 

In Eden every flower is blown : Amen. 



POEMS NAMED AND WITHOUT NAMES. 



POEMS NAMED AND WITHOUT NAMES. 



& HE evening now is still and calm, 




As if sad Eloisa's soul 
Had breathed a spiritual balm 

Throughout the softened whole. 
Within the azure of the sky 

There shineth not a single star ; 
But in a soft serenity 

The Crescent cometh from afar. 
In darker lines the firs that shade 

The house of Merkland round and round, 
Come out, and from the fragrant glade 

No liquid notes resound : 
I heard the birds this livelong day, 

In sweet unwrinkled blending, 



190 POEMS NAMED AND 

As if this merry month of May 

Should never have an ending. 
could I utter thoughts that rise, 

could I sing the tender 
Softness of the summer skies, 

In all their virgin splendor I 
crescent Moon, like pearled bark 

To ferry souls to glory ; 
silent deepening of the dark 

O'er vale and promontory 1 
Alas, that I should live, and be 

A churl in soul, while slowly 
God makes the fearful eve, and breathes 

A calm through hearts unholy I 



WITHOUT NAMES. 191 



(~\ COOL the summer woods 

Of dear Gartshore, where bloom 
Soft clouds of white anemones 

Among their own perfume. 
And clear the little brooklet, 

Singing an endless lay, 
Winding its nameless waters 

Close by the white highway. 
And here in sweet sensation, 

And soul-uneasy swoon, 
I 've lain for many a golden 

Hour of a summer noon. 
The cushats crooned around me 

Their hoarse and amorous song ; 
And in a brooding drowsiness, 

The echoes swooned along ; 



192 POEMS NAMED AND 

Till all the sweet sensations 

Grew into utter pain, 
And I was fain to wander 

Sadly home again. 
There have been brotherhoods in song, 

And human friendships ever true ; 
There have been lovers unto death, 

Yes, and right many too. 
But never in the march of time, 

And never in all mortal knowing, 
From history or nobler rhyme, 

Hath there been such a constant flowing 
One from mountains far away, 

One from glades of emerald shining, 
Flowing, flowing evermore 

For a delicate combining. 
If upon a summer's day, 

When the air is blue and bracing, 
You for Merkland take your way, 

Sweet uneasy fancies chasing ; 



WITHOUT NAMES. 193 

You may see the famous grove — 

If not famous, then most surely 
Ripe for fame, which is but love — 

Where they mingle most demurely. 
Not in song and babbling play 

Which no poet could unravel ; 
But in tender, simple way, 

On a bed of golden gravel. 
Where I sit I see them now, — 

Bothlin with her endless winding 
From a mountain's purple brow, 

Sacred contemplation finding ; 
In still nooks of shady rest, 

Gleaming greenly 'neath the holly : 
Youth, she says, is often blest 

With a little melancholy. 
Luggie from the orient fields 

Wiser is, yet hath a beauty, 
Which the snowy conscience yields 

To the softened face of duty. 



194 POEMS NAMED AND 

All she does bespeaks a grace, 

Yet the grace hath that of sadness 
We behold in many a face, 

Where we had expected gladness. 
But when Bothlin meets her there, 

See the change to sudden glory I 
Surely such another pair 

Never met in classic story. 
I could sing for half a day, 

And my spirit, never weary, 
Fashioning the vernal lay 

With a linnet's impulse cheery. 
But some night in leafy June, 

You the place yourself may see ; 
When the light is in the moon, 

Like the passion that 's in me. 



WITHOUT NAMES. 195 

THE ANEMONE. 

T HAVE wandered far to-day, 
In a pleased unquiet way ; 
Over hill and songful hollow, 
Vernal byways, fresh and fair, 
Did I simple fancies follow ; 
Till, upon a hillside bare, 
Suddenly I chanced to see 
A little white anemone. 

Beneath a clump of furze it grew ; 
And never mortal eye did view 
Its rathe and slender beauty, till 
I saw it in no mocking mood ; 
For with its sweetness did it fill 
To me the ample solitude. 
A fond remembrance made me see 
Strange light in the anemone. 



196 POEMS NAMED AND 

One April day when I was seven, 
Beneath the clear and deepening heaven, 
My father, God preserve him ! went 
With me a Scottish mile and more ; 
And in a playful merriment 
He decked my bonnet o'er and o'er — 
To fling a sunshine on his ease — 
With tenderest anemones. 

Now, gentle reader, as I live, 
This snowy little bloom did give 
My being most endearing throes. 
I saw my father in his prime ; 
But youth it comes, and youth it goes, 
And he has spent his blithest time : 
Yet dearer grown through all to me, 
And dearer the anemone. 

So with the spirit of a sage 
I plucked it from its hermitage, 



WITHOUT NAMES. 197 

And placed it 'tween the sacred leaves 
Of Agnes' Eve at that rare part 
Where she her fragrant robe unweaves, 
And with a gently beating heart, 
In troubled bliss and balmy woe, 
Lies down to dream of Porphyro. 

Let others sing of that and this, 
In war and science find their bliss ; 
Vainly they seek and will not find 
The subtle lore that nature brings 
Unto the reverential mind, 
The pathos worn by common things, 
By every flower that lights the lea, 
And by the pale anemone. 



198 POEMS NAMED AND 



T AST night a vision was dispelled, 

Which I can never dream again ; 
A wonder from the earth has gone, 

A passion from my brain. 
I saw upon a budding ash 

A cuckoo, and she blithely sung 
To all the valleys round about, 

While on a branch she swung. 
Cuckoo, cuckoo : I looked around, 

And like a dream fulfilled, 
A slender bird of modest brown, 

My sight with wonder thrilled. 
I looked again, and yet again ; 

My eyes, thought I, do sure deceive me ; 
But when belief made doubting vain, 

Alas, the sight did grieve me. 



WITHOUT NAMES. 199 

For twice to-day I heard the cry, 

The hollow cry of melting love ; 
And twice a tear bedimmed my eye. — 

I saw the singer in the grove, 
I saw him pipe his eager tone, 

Like any other common bird, 
And, as I live, the sovereign cry 

Was not the one I always heard. 
why within that lusty wood 

Did I the fairy sight behold ? 
why within that solitude 

Was I thus blindly overbold ? 
My heart, forgive me ! for indeed 

I cannot speak my thrilling pain : 
The wonder vanished from the earth, 

The passion from my brain. 



200 POEMS NAMED AND 

THE YELLOWHAMMER, 

T N fairy glen of Woodilee, 
One sunny summer morning, 
I plucked a little birchen tree, 
The spongy moss adorning ; 
And bearing it delighted home, 
I planted it in garden loam, 
Where, perfecting all duty, 
It flowered in tasselled beauty. 

When delicate April in each dell 
Was silently completing 
Her ministry in bud and bell, 
To grace the summer's meeting ; 
My birchen tree of glossy rind 
Determined not to be behind ; 
So with a subtle power 
The buds began to flower. 



WITHOUT NAMES. 201 

And I could watch from out my house 
The twigs with leaflets thicken ; 
From glossy rind to twining boughs 
The milky sap 'gan quicken. 
And when the fragrant form was green 
No fairer tree was to be seen, 
All Gartshore woods adorning, 
Where doves are always mourning. 

But never dove with liquid wing, 
Or neck of changeful gleaming, 
Came near my garden tree to sing 
Or croodle out its meaning. 
But this sweet day, an hour ago, 
A yellowhammer, clear and low, 
In love and tender pity 
Thrilled out his dainty ditty. 

And I was pleased, as you may think, 

And blessed the little singer : 
9* 



202 POEMS NAMED AND 

" fly for your mate to Luggie brink, 
Dear little bird ! and bring her ; 
And build your nest among the boughs, 
A sweet and cosey little house 
Where ye may well content ye, 
Since true love is so plenty. 

" And when she sits upon her nest, 
Here are cool shades to shroud her." 
At this the singer sang his best, 
louder yet, and louder ; 
Until I shouted in my glee, 
His song had so enchanted me. 
No nightingale could pant on 
In joy so wise and wanton. 

But at my careless noise he flew, 
And if he chance to bring her 
A happy bride the summer through 
'Mong birchen boughs to linger, 



WITHOUT NAMES. 

I '11 sing to you in numbers high 
A summer song that shall not die, 
But keep in memory clearly 
The bird I love so dearly. 



203 




204 POEMS NAMED AND 

SNOW. 

T^LOWERS upon the summer lea, 

Daisies, kingcups, pale primroses, — 
These are sung- from sea to sea, 

As many a darling rhyme discloses. 
Tangled wood and hawthorn dale 
In many a songful snatch prevail ; 
But never yet, as well I mind, 
In all their verses can I find 
A simple tune, with quiet flow, 
To match the falling of the snow. 

weary passed each winter day, 

And windily howled each winter night ; 

miry grew each village way, 
And mists enfolded every height ; 

And ever on the window-pane 

A. froward gust blew down with rain, 



WITHOUT NAMES. 205 

And day by day in tawny brown 
The Luggie stream came heaving down : — ■ 
I could have fallen asleep and dreamed 
Until again spring sunshine gleamed. 

And what ! said I, is this the mode 
That Winter kings it now-a-days ? 

The Robin keeps his own abode, 
And pipes his independent lays. 

I 've seen the day on Merkland hill, 

That snow has fallen with a will, 

Even in November ! Now, alas ! 

The whole year round we see the grass : — - 

Ah, winter now may come and go 

Without a single fall of snow. 

It was the latest day but one 

Of winter, as I questioned thus ; 
And sooth ! an angry mood was on, 

As at a thing most scandalous ; — 



206 POEMS NAMED AND 

When lo ! some hailstones on the pane 
With sudden tinkle rang amain, 
Till in an ecstasy of joy 
1 clapped and shouted like a boy, — 
0, rain may come and rain may go, 
But what can match the falling snow I 

It draped the naked sycamore 

On Foordcroft hill, above the well ; 
The elms of Eosebank o'er and o'er 

Were silvered richly as it fell. 
The distant Campsie peaks were lost, 
And farthest Criftin with his host 
Of gloomy pine-trees disappeared, 
Nor even a lonely ridge upreared. — 
0, rain may come and rain may go, 
But what can match the falling snow 1 

Afar upon the Solsgirth moor, 

Each heather sprig of withered brown 



WITHOUT NAMES. 207 

Is fringed with thread of silver pure 

As slow the soft flakes waver down ; 
And on Glenconner's lonely path, 
And Gartshore's still and open strath, 
It falleth, quiet as the birth 
Of morning o'er the quickening earth. — 
0, rain may come and rain may go, 
But what can match the falling snow ! 

And all around our Merkland home 

Is laid a sheet of virgin lawn ; 
On fairer, softer, ne'er did roam 

The nimble Oread or Faun. 
There is a wonder in the air, 
A living beauty everywhere ; 
As if the whole had ne'er been planned, 
But touched by Merlin's famous wand, 
Suddenly woke beneath his hand 
To potent bliss in fairy show — 
A mighty ravishment of snow ! 



208 POEMS NAMED AND 



T OHN FROST, old Nature's jeweller, had beauti- 
fied the leas, 
And the lustre of his fretwork was twinkling on 

the trees, 
As we rambled o'er the meadows in a meditative ease. 

We had left the town behind us for a roaming 

holiday, 
Beneath an arc of gloom, all dark and indistinct it lay, 
And the fog was wreathed about it like a robe of 

iron-gray. 

But a carpeting of leaflets, and a canopy of blue, 
And the mystery of ether as the warming sunshine 

grew, 
Sent a mellow thrill of happiness our eager spirits 

through. 



WITHOUT NAMES. 209 

And over lanes, where Winter bluff had shook his 

hoary beard, 
Where in the naked hedgerows the broodless nests 

appeared, 
And the brown leaves of the beech-tree were with 

silver gloss veneered. 

We wandered and we pondered till half the morn 
was spent, 

And the red orb through the tangled boughs his 
cunning vigor sent, 

And the valley mists all melted at his glance om- 
nipotent. 

Dim on a sloping hillside, clothed in a misty pall, 
Stands a turret gray and hoary, where the ancient 

ivies crawl, 
Their Arab arms round casement, sill, and door, 

and mould 'ring wall. 



210 POEMS NAMED AND 

And there we halted half an hour within a roofless 
hall, 

'Neath a bower of wildest ivy hanging downwards 
from the wall, 

Bearing in its grand luxuriance a flower fune- 
real. 

There we talked of the gay plumes erst bent to 

pass the lintel old, 
The maidens that were moved to smile at gallant 

wooers bold, 
The jovial nights of brave carouse, the wine-cups 

manifold. 

And all the faded glories of the mediseval time, 
When the age was in its manhood, and the land 

was in its prime, 
And manly deeds were chanted in a bold heroic 

rhyme. 



WITHOUT NAMES. 211 

Then, plucking each a sprig, bedecked with simple 
yellow flower, 

We scrambled sadly downwards from our old en- 
chanted bower, 

And the glory of the sunshine fell upon us like 
a shower. 

Once more beneath the concave of a clear effulgent 

sky, 
Where flocks of cawing rooks to the mansion 

wavered by, — 
A mansion standing coldly 'mid a windy rookery. 

And over breezy mountains, where the poacher, 

with his gun, 
Stood lonely as a bowlder-stone, 'tween earth and 

shining sun, 
We wandered and we pondered till the winter day 

was done. 



212 POEMS NAMED AND 



/^\H, many a leaf will fall to-night, 

As she wanders through the wood ! 

And many an angry gust will break 

The dreary solitude. 

I wonder if she 's past the bridge, 

Where Luggie moans beneath ; 

While rain-drops clash in planted lines 

On rivulet and heath. 

Disease hath laid his palsied palm 

Upon my aching brow ; 

The headlong blood of twenty-one 

Is thin and sluggish now. 

'T is nearly ten ! A fearful night, 

Without a single star 

To light the shadow on her soul 

With sparkle from afar : 



WITHOUT NAMES. 213 

The moon is canopied with clouds, 

And her burden it is sore ; — 

What would wee Jackie do, if he 

Should never see her more ? 

Ay, light the lamp, and hang it up 

At the window fair and free ; 

'T will be a beacon on the hill 

To let your mother see. 

And trim it well, my little Ann, 

For the night is wet and cold, 

And you know the weary, winding way 

Across the miry wold. 

All drenched will be her simple gown, 

And the wet will reach her skin : 

I wish that I could wander down, 

And the red quarry win, — 

To take the burden from her back, 

And place it upon mine ; 

With words of cheerful condolence, 

Not uttered to repine. 



214 POEMS NAMED AND 

You have a kindly mother, dears, 

As ever bore a child, 

And Heaven knows I love her well 

In passion undefiled. 

Ah me ! I never thought that she 

Would brave a night like this, 

While I sat weaving by the fire 

A web of fantasies. 

How the winds beat this home of ours 

With arrow-falls of rain ; 

This lonely home upon the hill 

They beat with might and main. 

And 'mid the tempest one lone heart 

Anticipates the glow, 

Whence, all her weary journey done, 

Shall happy welcome flow. 

'T is after ten ! 0, were she here, 

Young man although I be, 

I could fall down upon her neck, 

And weep right gushingly ! 



WITHOUT NAMES. 



215 



I have not loved her half enough, 
The dear old toiling one, 
The silent watcher by my bed, 
In shadow or in sun. 




216 POEMS NAMED AND 



" Happy child ! 
Thou art so exquisitely wild, 
I think of thee with many tears, 
For what may be thy lot in future years." 

Wordsworth. 

HPHE goldening peach on the orchard wall, 

Soft feeding in the sun, 

Hath never so downy and rosy a cheek 

As this laughing little one. 

The brook that murmurs and dimples alone 

Through glen, and grove, and lea, 

Hath never a life so merry and true 

As my brown little brother of three. 

From flower to flower, and from bower to bower, 

In my mother's garden green, 

A-peering at this, and a-cheering at that, 

The funniest ever was seen ; — 

Now throwing himself in his mother's lap, 

With his cheek upon her breast, 



WITHOUT NAMES. 217 

He tells his wonderful travels, forsooth ! 

And chatters himself to rest. 

And what may become of that brother of mine, 

Asleep in his mother's bosom ? 

Will the wee rosy bud of his being, at last 

Into a wild-flower blossom ? 

Will the hopes that are deepening as silent and fair 

As the azure about his eye, 

Be told in glory and motherly pride, 

Or answered with a sigh ? 

Let the curtain rest : for, alas ! 't is told 

That Mercy's hand benign 

Hath woven and spun the gossamer thread 

That forms the fabric so fine. 

Then dream, dearest Jackie ! thy sinless dream, 

And waken as blithe and as free ; 

There 's many a change in twenty long years, 

My brown little brother of three. 



i" 



218 POEMS NAMED AND 



EVEN sycamores of wondrous fairness smooth, 
And mealy green of trunk, and murmurous 

In multitudinous sun-twinkling leaves, 

This valley grace. Three fairer than the rest, 

Which in the silent worship of my heart 

1 fondly call the brothers of Bridgend, 

O'er cottage floors when doors are wide for heat, 

And often on the face of cradled child, 

Throw dusky shadows. And when lenient winds 

Blow motion, the cool shadows flicker and play 

Upon the floors, and glimpse the countenance 

Of the sweet baby, till the mother laughs, 

And bending downward, kisses. But of all 

The trees that ever tufted hill or vale, 

That ever took the breeze or sheltered nest, 

Or rung with flowing melody of birds, 

The strangest and the dearest, best and first, 



WITHOUT NAMES. 219 

Waves audibly upon a windy hill 

Above the Luggie. In the front of Spring, 

When the first crocus gleams among the grass, 

One half shines out full-leaved, the other bare : 

And when the Autumn violet hath lost 

Its fragrance, and the meadow-hay is mown, 

One half shines out full-leaved, the other bare. 

It is two trees, whose marriageable boughs 

Twine each with each and throw a common shade, 

A chestnut and an elm. The former opes 

Its oily buds whene'er the teeming south 

Breathes life and warm intenerating balm, 

But fades in early Autumn ; while supreme 

In vigorous development, the elm 

Full-foliaged glimmers till October's end. 

At the twin roots, and facing the rich west, 

A summer seat is rustically carved, 

A sylvan shelter from the midday sun : 

But nor in midday nor when decent eve 

Gathers her purples have I rested there ; 



220 POEMS NAMED AND 

But when through crisp and fleecy clouds the 

moon 
O'er the soft orient sheds a milder dawn. 
Then tripping up the dewy lea, with step 
Light as an antelope, a maiden came, 
And all her radiance in my bosom laid ; 
And on this seat, while high among the leaves 
Rain murmured, and the glory of the moon 
Was dimmed, I whispered all my passion tale. 
Ah me ! ah me ! her silken hair downslid, 
Her smooth comb dropt among the grass, and 

both 
Stooped searching, and her burning cheek met 

mine : 
And starting sudden upward, with her face 
Rosed to the beating temples, meek she gazed, 
Half sad, and the blue languish of her eyes 
Drooped tearful. And in madness and delight, 
I with my left arm zoned her little waist, 
And with my right hand smoothed the silken hair 



WITHOUT NAMES. 221 

From her fair brow, snow cold ; and, by the doves 

That bill and coo in Venus' pearly car ! 

There was a touch of lips. Then creeping close 

Into my bosom like a little thing 

That was confused, she cradled pantingly. 

Thus, while the rain was murmuring overhead, 

And the out-passioned moon through vaporous 

gloom 
Dipt queenly, whispered I my perilous tale. 
Ah me ! ah me ! a tender answer came ; 
For with her softling finger-tips she touched 
My hand, warm laid upon her heart, and pressed, 
A meek approval with averted face. 
poet maker, darling love, sweet love, 
Awakener of manhood and the life 
Of life ! But let me not like talking fool 
Prate all thy virgin whiteness, all thy sweet 
Deliciousness, for thou art living yet ! 
And as the rose that opens to the sun 
Its downy leaves, scents sweetest at the core,, 



222 POEMS NAMED AND 

So all thy loveliness is but the robe 
That clothes a maiden chastity of soul. 

hasten, hasten down your azure road, 
And darken all the golden zones of heaven, 
Bright Sun, for I am weary for my love. 




WITHOUT NAMES. 223 



CWEET Muse and well-beloved, with my decline 

Declining, like a rose crushed unawares, 

Having too early knowledge of decay, 

Too subtle pleasure to behold the tree 

Shed its thin foliage on the sluggish stream, — 

What a sweet subject for thy silver sounds ! 

for a quill plucked from the soaring wing 

Of archangel, then dipt in holy dew, 

To catch thy latest looks, thou loveliest 

October, o'er the many-colored woods ! 

October ! vastlier disconsolate 

Than Saturn guiding melancholy spheres, 

Through ante-mundane silence and ripe death. 

Ere the last stack is housed, and woods are bare, 
And the vermilion fruitage of the brier 



224 POEMS NAMED AND 

Is soaked in mist, or shrivelled up with frost ; 
Ere warm Spring nests are coldly to be seen 
Tenantless, but for rain and the cold snow, 
While yet there is a loveliness abroad, — 
The frail and indescribable loveliness 
Of a fair form Life with reluctance leaves, 
Being there only powerful, — while the earth 
Wears sackcloth in her great prophetic grief: ■ 

Then the reflective melancholy soul, — 
Aimlessly wandering with slow falling foot 
The heath'ry solitude, in hope to assuage 
The cunning humor of his malady, — 
Loses his painful bitterness, and feels 
His own specific sorrows one by one 
Taken up in the huge dolor of all things. 

the sweet melancholy of the time 

When gently, ere the heart appeals, the year 

Shines in the fatal beauty of decay ! 



WITHOUT NAMES. 225 

When the sun sinks enlarged on Carronben, 

Nakedly visible without a cloud, 

And faintly from the faint eternal blue 

(That dim, sweet harebell-color) comes the star 

Which evening wears ; — when Luggie flows in 

mist, 
And in the cottage windows, one by one, 
With sudden twinkle household lamps are lit, 
What noiseless falling of the faded leaf I 

Sweet on a blossoming summer's afternoon, 

When Fancy plays the wizard in the brain, 

Idly to saunter through a lusty wood ! 

But sweeter far — by how much sweeter, God 

Alone hath knowledge — in a pensive mood, 

Outstretched on green moss-velvet flossed with 

thyme, 

To watch the fall o' the leaf before the moon 

Shines out in sweet completion circular. 

For when the sunset hath withdrawn its gold 
10* o 



226 POEMS NAMED AND WITHOUT NAMES. 

And tawny glimmering, like the surcease 

Of rich, low melody, erst inaudible streams 

Find voices in their still unwearied flow ; 

And winds that have been much about the moors 

And mountains, have a deadly feel of cold, 

Forespeaking clear blue dawns and frosty chill. 




MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 



c-5XK£j 



MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 



gtiQ? LIME-TREE broad of bough and rough of 
trunk 



Deepens a shadow, as the evening cool, 
Over the Luggie gathering in deep pool 

Contemplative, its waters summer-shrunk ; 

The Lammas floods have sucked away the mould 
About its roots, and now in bare sunshine 
Like knot of snakes they twine and intertwine 

Fantastic implication, fold in fold. 

Secure in covert, 'neath the fringing fern 

Lurks the bright-speckled trout, untroubled, save 

When boyhood with a glorious unconcern 
Eagerly plunges in the sleeping wave. 

Here the much-musing poet might recapture 

The inspiration flown, the vagrant rapture. 



230 MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 



II. 

T7 ZEKIEL, thus from the Lord God. Behold, 

Mount Seir, I am against thee ! Desolate, 

Most desolate thy cloudy and dark fate. 
Between the lips of talkers bad and bold, 
Thy towns forsaken, and thy rivers rolled 

Through silent wastes, are taken up, and great 

The joy at thy high glories ruinate. 
While all the earth is wanton, thou art cold, 

For thy most cruel lifting of the spear 
'Gainst Israel in her time of consternation. 

Slain men shall fill thy mountains, mount Seir ! 
Sith thou hast blood pursued, fell tribulation 

Shall curse thy blessings, mocked and unde- 
plored : — 
As I live, thou shalt know I am the Lord I 



MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 231 



in. 

ONG yearnings had my soul to gaze upon 

Fair Italy with atmosphere of fire ; 
On tawny Spain ; on th' immemorial land 
Where Time has dallied with the Parthenon 

In beautiful affection and desire. 
But when last even, effluently bland, 

I saw sweet Luggie wind her amber waters 
Thro' lawns of dew and glens of glimmering green, 

And saw the comeliness of Scotland's daughters, 
Their speaking eyes and modest mountain mien, — 

I blest the Godhead over all presiding, 
Who placed me here, removed from human strife, 

Where Luggie, in her clear, unwearied gliding, 
Is but the image of my inner life. 



232 MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 



IV. 

O WEET Mavis ! at this cool delicious hour 

Of gloaming, when a pensive quietness 
Hushes the odorous air, — with what a power 

Of impulse unsubdued, thou dost express 
Thyself a spirit ! While the silver dew 

Holy as manna on the meadow falls, 
Thy song's impassioned clarity, trembling through 

This omnipresent stillness, disenthralls 
The soul to adoration. First I heard 

A low, thick lubric gurgle, soft as love, 
Yet sad as memory, through the silence poured 
Like starlight. But the mood intenser grows, 

Precipitate rapture quickens, move on move 
Lucidly linked together, till the close. 



MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 2J3 



f~\ DEEP unlovely brooklet, moaning slow 

Through moorish fen in utter loneliness ! 
The partridge cowers beside thy loamy flow 

In pulseful tremor, when with sudden press 
The huntsman fluskers though the rustled heather. 

In March thy sallow-buds from vermeil shells 
Break satin-tinted, downy as the feather 

Of moss-chat that among the purplish bells 
Breasts into fresh new life her three unborn. 

The plover hovers o'er thee, uttering clear 
And mournful — strange, his human cry forlorn : 

While wearily, alone, and void of cheer 
Thou guid'st thy nameless waters from the fen, 
To sleep unsunned in an untrampled glen. 



234 MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 



VI. 

A \ 7TTH what a calm serenity she smooths 

Her way through cloudless jasper sown with stars ! 
Chaster than virtue, sweeter than the truths 

Of maidenhood, in Spenser's knightly wars. 
For what is all Belphoebe's golden hair, 

The chastity of Britomart, the love 
Of Floriniel so faithful and so fair, 

To thee, thou Wonder ! And yet far above 
Thy inoffensive beauty must I hold 

Dear Una, sighing for the Red-cross Knight 
Through all her losses, crosses manifold. 

And when the lordly lion fell in fight, 
Who, who can paragon her tearful woe ? 
Not thou, not thou, Moon ! didst ever passion so. 



MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 235 



VII. 

r\ PEECIOUS Morphia ! I sanctify 

The soothing power that in a painless swoon 
Laps my weak limbs, giving me strength to lie, 

Till sacred dawn increases until noon : 
Then when, from his meridional height, 

The sun devolves, and cooling breezes wake, 
It is a comfort and divine delight 

The weary bed exhausted to forsake, 
And bathe my temples in the blessed air. 

But when day wanes and the wind-moaning night 
Deepens to darkness, then thy virtue rare, 

dream-creative liquid ! brings delight, 
Thy silver drops diffusive, kindly steep 
The senses in the golden juice of sleep. 



236 MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 



VIII. 

^~"*OME, light-foot Lady ! from thy vaporous hall, 

And, with a silver-swim into the air, 
Shine down the starry cressets one and all 

From Pleiades to golden Jupiter 1 
I see a growing tip of silver peep 

Above the full-fed cloud, and lo ! with motion 
Of queenly stateliness, and smooth as sleep, 

She glides into the blue for my devotion. 

sovran Beauty ! standing here alone 
Under the insufferable infinite, 

1 worship with dazed eyes and feeble moan 

Thy lucid persecution of delight. 
Come, cloudy dimness ! Dip, fair dream, again 1 
God 1 I cannot gaze, for utter pain. 



MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 237 

IX. 

MAIDENHOOD. 

A SACRED land, to common men unknown, 

A land of bowery glades and greenwoods hoary, 
Still waters where white stars reflected shone, 

And ancient castles in their ivied glory. 
Fair knights caparisoned in golden mail, 

And maidens whose enchantment was their beauty, 
Met but to whisper each the passion-tale, 

For love was all their pleasure and their duty. 
Here cedar bark, as with a moving will, 

Floated through liquid silver all untended ; 
Here wrong and baseness ever came to ill, 

And virtue with delight was sweetly blended. 
This land, dear Spenser ! was thy fair creation, 
Made through fine glamour of imagination. 



238 MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 



X. 

TDACTOLUS singeth over golden sand ; 

Scamander, old and blood-empurpled river, 
Rolls yet her divine waters ; Castaly 

Flows lucid in the light of ancient song ; 
Whilst thou, sweet Luggie ! fairest of this land, 

And fair as any of that famous throng, 
In pastoral, still loveliness, must be 

Bald as a marshy brooklet nameless ever 1 
Nay, by the spirit of beauty and dear pleasure, 

Sure I shall sing thee as my first delight, 
Nurse of my soul, companion of my leisure ! 

And if in aftertime thy waters roll 
More worthily, more spiritually bright, 

It will be sunshine to my perfect soul. 



MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 239 



XI. 

f~\ FOR the days of sweet Mythology, 

When drippingNaiads taught their streams to glide ! 
When, 'mid the greenery, one would ofttimes spy 

An Oread tripping with her face aside. 
The dismal realms of Dis by Virgil sung, 

Whose shade led Dante, in his virtue bold, 
All the sad grief and agony among, 

O'er Acheron, that mournful river old, 
Ev'n to the Stygian tide of purple gloom ! 

Pan in the forest making melody ! 
And far away where hoariest billows boom, 

Old Neptune's steeds with snorting nostrils high ! 
These were the ancient days of sunny song ; 
Their memory yet how dear to the poetic throng ! 



Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 



No. 143 Washington Street, 
Boston, Sept., 1864. 



Messrs. ROBERTS BROTHERS' 

List of Publications. 



Poems. 

By JEAN INGELOW. 

Ninth Thousand. 1 vol. i6mo. Vellum and Fancy Cloth, 
gilt top. Price, $ 1.50. 

" The new name undoubtedly belongs to a new poet, and this new volume 
will make the eyes of all lovers of poetry dance with a gladder light than if 
they had come upon a treasure-trove of gold. . . . Here is the unmistakable 
touch and breath of freshness ; the clear early carol and dewy light Here is 
the presence of Genius, which cannot easily be defined, but which makes itself 
surely felt in a glow of delight such as makes the old world young again. 
Here is the power to fill common earthly facts with heavenly fire ; a power to 
gladden wisely and to sadden nobly ; to shake the heart, and bring moist tears 
into the eyes, through which the spirit may catch its loftiest light." — London 
A then&um. 

" It would be a great injustice to confound this volume with the mass of so- 
called poetry. ... It contains something more than commonplace thoughts 
clothed in tolerably pretty words. Nor is her volume, like too many of those 
of even the more tolerable verse-writers of the day, made up of a mass of com- 
parative rubbish, relieved here and there by an isolated piece, to which it is not 
impossible conscientiously to award praise. One of the most striking charac- 
teristics of Miss Ingelow's poems is the remarkable evenness of their quality ; 
and there is nothing in her volume which may not fairly claim to be regarded 
good. . . . Miss Ingelow's volume can scarcely fail to win for itself a warm, 
welcome from all lovers of true poetry, and warrants us in anticipating that she 
will at some future time lake a permanent place among English poets." — Lo?f 
don Spectator. 

I 



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Poems. 

By DAVID GRAY. 

With an Introductory Notice by Lord Houghton (R. M. 
Milnes), Memoir of the Author, and Final Memorials. 

i vol. i6mo. Vellum and Fancy Cloth, gilt top. Price, $ 1.50. 

" I will not here assume the position of a poetical critic, both because I know 
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the personal interest I took in David Gray is likely in some degree to influence 
my judgment. There is in truth no critic of poetry but the man who enjoys it, 
and the amount of gratification felt is the only just measure of criticism. I be- 
lieve, however, that I should have found much pleasure in these Poems if I 
had met with them accidentally, and if I had been unaware of the strange 
and pathetic incidents of their production. But the public mind will not 
separate the intrinsic merits of the verses from the story of the writer, any 
more than the works and fate of Keats or of Chatterton ; we value all con- 
nected with the being of every true Poet, because it is the highest form of 
nature that man is permitted to study and enjoy." — Lord Houghton (R. 
M. Milnes). • 

"And David's poetry? We have said that it is yet too early to estimate 
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writer. More than most men did David interweave his own personal joys and 
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to possess dramatic power. His writings, however, have a pathos and an 
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— Robert Buchanan. 

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of Robert Burns, are marked by rare tenderness and sincerity, and by that 
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of true genius. Such a pure and pathetic story, such lucid and breathing 
poetry as we have here, are charged w,ith a blessed ministry for a coarse and 
bustling age, for a reckless utilitarian people. The feelings of love, pity, and 
grief this little book is calculated to awaken will exert a salutary influence, 
softening the heart, nourishing human sympathy and poetic sentiment." — 
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WE HAVE NO SAVIOUR BUT JESUS, AND NO HOME 
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Meet for Heaven. 

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"This, like the former volume, 'Heaven our Home,' by the same anony- 
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In Press. 

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» 
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Illustrated. Three volumes, in a neat box. Fancy cloth, gilt. Price 



Fireside Tales, 

In Prose and Verse. By Mary Howitt. With illustrations, x vol. 
i6mo. Fancy cloth, gilt. Price 75 cents. 



The Scottish Orphans ; 



A Moral Tale, founded on an historical fact ; to which is added, Arthur 
Monteith, a continuation of the Scottish Orphans. By Mrs. Blackford. 
1 vol. i6mo. Fancy cloth, gilt. Price 75 cents. 



The Fireside Library, 



Containing — Fireside Tales. By Mary Howitt ; 

The Turtle Dove ; and other Stories. By Mary Howitt ; 
The Christmas Tree, and other Stories. By Mary 

Howitt ; 
The Scottish Orphans ; a Moral Tale. By Mrs. Black- 
ford ; 
Arthur Monteith ; a sequel to the Scottish Orphans. By 

Mrs Blackford. 
Helen and her Cousins ; or, Two Months at Ashfield 
Rectory. 
Illustrated. Six volumes, with a neat box. i6mo. Fancy cloth, gilt. 
Price $ 3.00. 



